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CORNEILLE AND HIS TIMES. 



BY M. GUIZOT. 



Z,<^ X 



LONDON : 

iilCHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 

^ublisfjer in ©rtjinarg to J^cr iHajcstg. 

[The Copyright of this "Work has been assigned by M. Guizot to the Publishor.] 

1852. 






LONDON : 

BBADBUEY AND EVANS, PBINTEllS, WHITEFRIAES. 



PREFACE. 

I HAVE reprinted, in the present Volume, one of 
the first works of my youth, a work pubHshed for the 
first time in 1813, nearly forty years ago. I have 
made many changes in it, and I was tempted to 
change much more. So many years, and such years, 
develope in the mind entirely new views upon all 
subjects, upon literature as well as life ; and no one 
is ignorant of the discoveries which we may make 
by changing our horizon, without changing our ideas. 
Perhaps, therefore, I ought to have re-written my 
work. I did not wish to do so. A book must exist 
and last out its time as it is. This book is, if I 
mistake not, a faithful image of the spirit which pre- 
vailed, forty years ago, in literature, among the men 
who cultivated it, and the public who loved it. 

For literature was carefully cultivated and truly 
loved at that time, which left it so httle space for its 
manifestation. Never had the rude hand of politics 



'■ PKEFACE. 

SO completely held dominion over France ; never 
had force so incessantly filled years, months, and 
days with its actions and hazards. War seemed to 
have become the normal state of human society, — 
not war restrained within certain hmits by the law 
of nations and the ancient traditions of States, but 
war unlimited and immense, overturning, deranging, 
commingling or separating, violently and without 
intermission, both governments and nations. During 
the early days of my youth, and before its termina- 
tion, I beheld civilised Europe exposed to two oppo- 
site deluges of invasion and conquest, the like of 
which had never been witnessed since the fall of the 
Roman Empire. During the space of ten years, I 
beheld the empire of Napoleon — the most dazzhng, 
the most overwhelming, and the most ephemeral 
meteor that ever crossed the horizon of the world- 
arise, grow, extend itself, and vanish away. And 
it was not only upon the pohtical state of nations, 
the fate of crowned heads, and the lives of generals 
and soldiers, that the ever-increasing weight of those 
vast conflicts which were destined to prove so vain 
was laid ; their influence extended throughout the 
whole of society ; no existence, however independent 
or insignificant it may have been, was exempted from 
putting forth its share of effort and bearing its part 
of the general burden ; and domestic life, in the 
obscurest as well as in the most elevated regions of 



PREFACE. vii 

society, was stricken by the same blows which over- 
turned the tlirones of kings and effaced the boundaries 
of empires. In 1810, the commands of absolute 
power dragged from their homes sons and brothers 
who had complied with all the obligations of the 
law, and sent them violently to the army. In 1814, 
the rural districts were deficient in cultivators ; and, 
in the towns, suspended labour and abandoned build- 
ings presented an appearance of recent ruins, as 
strange as it was painful to contemplate. 

Such a state of things, in its glories as well as in 
its disasters, is but ill-suited to the prosperity of 
literature, which requires either more repose or more 
liberty. And yet, such is the intellectual vitality of 
France that, even then, it did not suffer itself to be 
confined or exhausted in a single career ; but it 
furnished noble gratifications to the minds of men 
generally, at the same time that it lavished tens of 
thousands of brave and energetic soldiers to gratify 
the insatiable ambition of one man. 

Three hterary powers (I do not here allude to 
scientific men or philosophers) flourished during the 
Empire, and exercised a pregnant influence both 
upon authors and upon the public. These were 
the Journal des Debats, M. de Chateaubriand^ and 
Mme. de Stael. 

The literary restoration of France, — that is, a 
return to the study of the ancient classics and of 



viii PEEFACE. 

our own French classics, the great writers of the 
seventeenth century — was the undertaking and the 
w^ork of the Journal des Debats, It was a work of 
re-action, often excessive and unjust, as is the case 
with all re-actions ; but it was a work of good sense 
and good taste, which led the public mind back to a 
feeling of the truly beautiful — of that beautiful which 
is at once grand and simple, eternal and national. It 
was the characteristic of the seventeenth century in 
France that literature was then cultivated for its own 
sake, not as an instrument for the propagation of 
certain systems, and for ensuring the success of par- 
ticular designs. Corneille, Racine, and Boileau, and 
even Moliere and La Fontaine, entertained, upon the 
great philosophical and political questions of the 
day, either very decided opinions, or very marked 
tendencies ; Pascal and La Bruyere, Bossuet and 
Fenelon, made more of philosophy and polemics 
than any other writers at any other period have been 
able to do. But, in their hterary activity, these great 
men had no other pre -occupation than the beautiful 
and the true, and were anxious to paint them well 
and skilfully only that they might gain for them 
greater admiration. They felt, for the object of 
their labours, a love which was pure from every other 
thought, and which was as serious as it was pure ; 
for, whilst they did not assume to rule society by their 
writings, they aspired to something far above the 



PREFACE. IX 

mere amusement of mankind. A frivolous and worldly 
entertainment was as far from their intentions as a 
hauglity or indirect propagandism. At once modest 
and proud, they demanded of literature, for the public 
as well as for themselves, none but intellectual enjoy- 
ments ; but they introduced and infused into these 
enjoyments a profound and almost solemn feeling, 
believing themselves called upon to elevate the souls 
of men by charming them with the exhibition of the 
beautiful, and not merely to arouse them for a 
moment from their idleness or ennui. 

And not only is this the great characteristic of the 
literature of the seventeenth century, but it was by 
this that the seventeenth century was essentiall}^ and 
supremely a literary age. The Muses, to speak in 
classic language, are jealous divinities ; they will 
reign and not serve, be adored and not employed ; 
and they bestow all their treasures only upon those 
who seek after them solely to enjoy them, and 
not to expend them upon foreign uses. It was on 
this account also that the Journal des Dehats, fifty 
years ago, became a literary power. Other journals 
devoted themselves, with considerable talent, to 
literature ; but the Journal des Debats was able, 
better than any other, to discern and appropriate to 
itself, as it were, the truly literary idea. It reminded 
literature of its own power, by referring it to the 
examples of the time at which it had shone with 



X PEEFACE. 

greatest lustre, as regarded itself, and had been 
animated by the purest and most independent 
feeling of its mission. The principal writers in the 
Journal des Debats, at the time to which I allude — 
MM. Geoffrey, Feletz, Dussault, Fievee, and Hoffmann 
— were, in themselves, men of very distinguished 
mental powers ; but if they had written isolatedly, 
and each one had followed the bent of his own 
inclination, they would assuredly have obtained far 
less general authority and personal renown. They 
grouped themselves around one thought — the literary 
restoration of the seventeenth century ; with this 
object, and beneath this standard, they attacked the 
writers of the following century and of the age in 
which they lived, whether philosophers or scholars, 
poets or prose-writers, — men to whose influence they 
had long submitted, and whose tastes and ideas they 
frequently, at bottom, still retained. And by placing 
themselves thus, in the sphere of literature, at the 
head of the general movement of anti -revolutionary 
re-action, their journal became the literary journal 
par ewcellence, and they obtained a real sway over 
the public judgment and taste. , 

In the very midst of this dominion, and with the 
entire favour of the journal which wielded it, arose 
the boldest innovator and the most modern genius 
that has illustrated our contemporary hteraturo : I 
mean M. de Chateaubriand, a genius as little akin to 



PEEFACE. XI 

the seventeenth century as to the eighteenth, a briUiant 
interpreter of the incoherent ideas and disturbed 
feelings of the nineteenth, and himself affected by 
those maladies of our time which he so well under- 
stood and described, flattering and opposing them by 
turns. Kead once again the " Essai Historique sur 
les Revolutions," "Rene,'' and the " Memoires d'Outre- 
tombe," those three works in which M. de Chateau- 
briand, in his youth, his mature age, and his old age, 
has pourtrayed himself with such complacency ; is 
there a single one of our dispositions and of our 
moral infirmities which is not contained therein ? Our 
vast hopes, our speedy disappointments, our changeful 
temptations, our perpetual ardours, exhaustions, and 
revivals, our alternating ambitions and susceptibilities, 
our returns to faith and our relapses into doubt, our as- 
pirations sometimes towards authority and sometimes 
towards liberty, — that activity at once indefatigable 
and uncertain, that commingling of noble passions 
and of egotism, that fluctuation between the past and 
the future, indeed all those variable and ill-assorted 
features which, for half a century, have characterised 
the state of society and of the human soul amongst 
us, — of all these things M. de Chateaubriand was 
conscious in his own person, and his works, like his 
life, everywhere attest their influence and bear their 
impress. Hence arose his popularity, which was 
general, in spite of our dissensions, and continued, 



xn PEEFACE. 

notwithstanding our political and literary revolutions. 
The lettered and travelled gentleman Avho so boldly 
yielded to the exuberance of an imagination enriched 
with the treasures of all ages and of all worlds, the 
author who made so novel and sometimes so rash an 
use of our language, — this poetical and romantic 
prose-writer gained the admiration of the purest and 
most rigid judges, of M. de Fontanes, of M. Bertin, 
and of all the classic school of the Journal des 
Debats. The political emigre and partisan of the 
Bourbons, who, whenever the sovereign and definitive 
question was proposed, invariably ranged himself on 
the side of ancient recollections, has always obtained 
or regained the favour of the young liberal, and even 
revolutionary, generations. He was attentive and 
skilful in concihating these various suffrages ; he 
possessed an instinctive perception of public im- 
pressions, and could select, from his own feelings, 
that which was likely to please them. But this 
skilfulness would never have sufficed to gain him 
such difficult and opposite successes, unless he had 
been, by his merits as well as by his defects, by the 
good qualities as well as by the weaknesses of his 
character and genius, in harmony with his age ; he 
answered to inclinations and tastes which, though very 
different in other respects, were equally eager after, 
and delighted with, the gratifications which he offered 
them. For this reason, in politics, notwithstanding 



PREFACE. xiii 

his continual reverses, he was always a formidable 
adversary^ and in literature, from the same cause, 
he exercised over the whole of the public, over those 
minds which distrusted him as well as over those 
who blindly admired or imitated him, a most prompt, 
and remarkable influence. 

Madame de Stael was not adapted thus to please 
so many different parties and tastes. She was a 
passionate and sincere person, who had her feelings 
and ideas seriously at heart, and she was, at the same 
time, a faithful representative of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, in its best and noblest aspirations. So true a 
nature, formed in the midst of so factitious a state 
of society, and so brilliant a mixture of the life of 
the soul and the life of the salons, of inner emotions 
and worldly impressions, have rarely been met with. 
This is the original and striking feature in Madame 
de Stael, and this forms her strong bond of union 
with the eighteenth century, although, in other and 
important respects, she differs widely from it. It 
was an age full of confusion and contradiction, of 
serious ambition and frivolous manners, of generosity 
and personality, — which became intoxicated at once 
with moral sentiments and with ideas destructive of 
all morahty, which desired to attain to goodness 
whilst utterly disregarding its source and laws, and 
which led men to the gates of Hell by dreaming for 
them, with lively and sincere sympathy, of innocence 



xiv PREFACE. 

and the happiness of Paradise. Madame de Stael 
retained, under the Empire, the generous sentiments 
of that old Hberal regime amidst which her youth 
had been passed ; her mind had become elevated 
and purified without detriment to her faith ; and 
independently of their intrinsic merit, her works, 
whatever they might be, literature, philosophy, 
romance, morality or personal memoirs, received 
therefrom a powerful element of attraction. When 
a people has engaged with passionate earnestness in 
a great movement on behalf of a great cause, no 
mistakes, no disasters, no remorse, no re-action, 
however natural and mighty it may be, can efface 
from its heart the remembrance of its first days of 
strength and hope. The Revolution which began 
in 1789 has already received, and will perhaps con- 
tinue to receive, some harsh lessons ; it has already 
cost, and will perhaps continue to cost, France very 
dear ; the Empire, which sprang from it, disowned 
and maltreated it strangely; and yet 1789 was, 
under the Empire, and is at the present day, and 
will always continue to be, a great national date, 
a powerful word, most dear to France. Madame 
de Stael was and remained attached to 1789; she 
clung to it by fibres ever living, even where they 
seemed utterly deadened. The numerous readers 
of her writings delighted to find in them — some their 
recollections and the image, manners and tone of that 



PREFACE. >:v 

old society in wliich they had moved, and others 
their hopes, and a living faith in the principles of that 
future which they had dreamed of for their country ; 
for all, they contained matter either for sympathy, 
for criticism, or for commentary ; and each new 
work of Madame de Stael constituted, in the literary 
world, in the drawing-rooms of fashion, and even 
among the scattered and distant public, an intellectual 
event, a theme of conversation, of discussions, of 
reminiscences, or of prospects full of movement and 
interest. 

I am desirous to pass over no merit, and to 
offend no memory : the literature of the Empire 
certainly presents other names which justly occupied 
public attention at that time, and which ought not 
now to be forgotten. I persist, however, in my 
conviction : the Journal des Debats, that association 
of judicious restorers of the literary ideas and tastes of 
the seventeenth century — M. de Chateaubriand, that 
brilhant and sympathetic interpreter of the moral 
and intellectual perplexities of the nineteenth — and 
Madame de Stael, that noble echo of the generous 
sentiments and noble aspirations of the eighteenth, 
— are the three influences, the three powers, which, 
under the Empire, truly acted upon our literature 
and left their impress upon its history. 

And all these three powers were in opposition. 
The incidents of their life would teach us this even 



xvi PREFACE. 

if their writings did not exist to prove it. By an 
unexampled act of confiscation, the Journal des 
Debats was taken out of the hands of its proprietors ; 
M. de Chateaubriand was excluded from the French 
Academy ; and Madame de Stael spent ten years 
in exile. 

Absolute power is not the necessary enemy of 
literature, nor is literature necessarily its enemy. 
Witness Louis XIV. and his age. But for Kterature 
to flourish under such a state of things, and to 
embellish it with its splendour, absolute power must 
be acknowledged by the general moral belief of the 
public, and not merely accepted as a result of cir- 
cumstance, in the name of necessity. It is also requi- 
site that the possessor of absolute authority should 
know how to respect the dignity of the great minds 
that cultivate literature, and to leave them sufficient 
liberty for the unrestrained manifestation of their 
powers. France and Bossuet believed sincerely in 
the sovereign right of Louis XIV. ; Moliere and La 
Fontaine freely ridiculed his courtiers as well as his 
subjects ; and Racine, through the mouth of Joad, 
addressed to the little king Joas precepts witli 
which the great king was not offended. When 
Louis XIV., during his persecution of the Jansenists, 
said to Boileau : "I am having search made for 
M. Arnauld in every direction," Boileau replied : 
" Your Majesty is always fortunate ; you will not 



PREFACE. 3LVU 

find him ;" and the king smiled at the courageous 
wit of the poet, without showing any symptoms 
of anger. On such conditions, absolute power can co- 
exist harmoniously with the greatest and most high- 
spirited minds that have ever devoted themselves to 
literature. But nothing of the kind was the case under 
the Empire. The Emperor Napoleon, who had saved 
France from anarchy, and was covering her with 
glory in Europe, was nevertheless regarded, by all 
clear-sighted and sensible men, merely as the sove- 
reign master of a temporary government, in little 
harmony with the general tendencies of society, and 
commanded by necessity rather than established in 
faith. He was served, and with good reason, by 
men of eminent minds and noble characters, for his 
government was necessary and great ; but beyond 
his government, in the regions of thought, great 
minds and lofty characters possessed neither inde- 
pendence nor dignity. Napoleon was not wise 
enough to leave them their part in space ; and he 
feared without respecting them. Perhaps he could 
not possibly have acted otherwise ; and perhaps this 
may have been a vice of his position, as much as an 
error of his genius. Nowhere, in no degree, and 
under no form, did the Empire tolerate opposition. 
In France, in the age in which we live, this becomes, 
sooner or later, even for the strongest governments, 
a deceitful snare and an immense danger. After 



xviii PEEFACE. 

fifteen years of glorious absolute power, Napoleon 
fell ; the proprietors of the Journal des Debats 
regained possession of their property ; M. de 
Chateaubriand celebrated the return of the Bour- 
bons ; and Madame de Stael beheld the great desires 
of 1789 consecrated by the Charter of Louis XVIII. 
And now, after thirty-four years of that system for 

which our fathers longed so ardently ! God 

gives us severe lessons, which we must comprehend 
and accept, without despairing of the good cause. 
After having witnessed these prodigious vicissitudes 
of human affairs, we are equally cured of presumption 
and of discouragement. 

When, in 1813, I pubHshed this sketch of the 
literature of the seventeenth century, I was aided in 
my labour by a person to whom I was long indebted 
for my happiness, and to whom I shall ever owe the 
dearest recollections of my life. The essays on 
Corneille's three contemporaries, Chapelain, Rotrou, 
and Scarron, were prepared and, to a great extent, 
written out by her. I have carefully revised them, 
as well as the essays on Poetry in France before the 
Time of Corneille, and on Corneille himself; and 
I leave them in their place as an integral part of 
this work. 

The Appendices annexed to the life of Corneille, 
have been furnished to me by the friendship of that 
learned Norman archaeologist, M. Floquet, whose 



PREFACE. xix 

researches have elucidated so many important points 
in our poHtical and hterary history, and who is 
now preparing a work on the Life and Writings of 
Bossuet, which is full of real discoveries. My 
gratitude to him, I am sure, only anticipates that 
of the public. 

GUIZOT. 
Paris : May 24, 1852. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

INTRODUCTION :— POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE 

TIME OF CORNEILLE 1 

PIERRE CORNEILLE . 116 

JEAN CHAPELAIN . .279 

JEAN ROTROU . . . 331 

PAUL SCARRON 372 

APPENDIX 437 



POETRY IN FRANCE 



BEFORE THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 



Literary history has this advantage over general 
history, that it holds in actual possession, and is able 
to exhibit, the very objects which it desires to make 
known and to judge. Achilles and Priam are dead ; 
all our knowledge of them and their actions is 
derived from Homer ; but Homer still lives — by his 
poems he belongs to history, and his poems are in 
our hands. 

To behold these creations of genius is, however, 
not sufficient ; we must also understand them. How 
can w^e understand literary history without being 
acquainted with the times and the men in whose 
midst the monuments to which it refers were reared ? 
and how can we become acquainted wath men who 
w^ere as yet unable to exercise their powers of 



2 POETEY IN FEANCE BEFOEE 

observation, and to gain a knowledge of themselves '? 
As Milton says : — 

" For man to tell how human life began 
Is hard ; — for who himself beginning knew ? " 

Literary history is, then, frequently under the 
necessity of compensating, by conjecture, for the 
silence of facts. But conjectures founded upon the 
natural progress of the human mind fail when we 
have to account for the course pursued by the lite- 
rature of modern times. Among a people whose 
character is formed in a simple manner, and whose 
civilisation is the result of the free and harmonious 
development of the human mind, the question of the 
origin of literature, although somewhat complicated 
in itself, is not very difficult of solution : the answer 
must be sought, and will be found, in the sponta- 
neous expansion of our nature. Poetry, the first 
outburst of a budding imagination in the midst of a 
world that is new to it, then finds, in all surrounding 
objects, themes for its songs, and derives from the 
simplest sights a host of sensations previously un- 
known. Adam, on opening his eyes for the first 
time to the light, thus describes to us his first 
movements : — 

* * "As new waked from soundest sleep, 
Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid. 
Straight toward Heaven my wondering eyes I turned 
And gazed awhile the ample sky ; till raised 
By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung, 



THE TIME OF COEXEILLE. 6 

As thitherward endeavouring, and upinglit 
Stood on my feet. About me roxind I saw 
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and simny plains, 
And liquid lapse of murm'ring streams ; by these, 
Creatures that lived, and moved, and walk'd or flew ; 
Birds on the branches warbling : all things smiled ; 
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflow'd. 
MyseK I then perused, and limb by limb 
Survey'd, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran 
With supple joints, as lively vigour led : 
But who I was, or where, or from what cause. 
Knew not : to speak I tried, and forthwith spake." ^ 

Such is man at the moment when his faculties 
awake to the first joys of imagination ; he gazes at 
the ample dome of heaven — at the woods and plains ; 
he thinks he sees them for the first time ; around 
him, all things are animated and excite him ; within 
himself, inspiration awakes and agitates him ; his 
accumulated sensations demand expression ; he tries 
to speak, and speaks ; and poetry is born, as simple 
as that which man beholds, as vivid as that which 
he feels. It is nature that he displays to us — 
nature adorned with all the wealth that its aspect 
has developed within man.* He wishes to describe, 
and he paints ; he desires to give names to what he 
views, and, lo ! — 

" His tongue obey'd, and readily could name 
Whate'er he saw." 

But he names everything as he perceives it — as a 
being filled with a life that he himself imparts to it ; 

^ Miltf/n's Paradise Lost, book viii. 

B 2 



4 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

his feelings and the objects whick excite them, unite 
in one and the same idea : — 

"With fragrance and witli joy his heart o'erflows." 

His moral nature is diffused universally over the phy- 
sical nature which surrounds it ; and his soul peoples 
space with creatures, living and sensible like himself 
The Greeks took delight in song ; and Homer sang, 
— he sang the victories of his fellow-countrymen, 
their quarrels and reconciliations, their games and 
festivals, their business and their pleasures. On the 
shield of Achilles are displayed flocks, harvests, and 
vintages ; conjugal affection gives tenderness to the 
farewells of Andromache ; Priam is a father weeping 
over the loss of his son ; and Achilles utters the 
laments of friendship over the body of Patroclus. 
Thus, the most natural feelings and the simplest 
interests were what inspired the muse of the prince 
of poets. These feelings were the first that moved 
the heart of man ; these interests were, at the 
outset, his only interests. Before he came into 
being, they animated earth and skies ; and, in the 
events of a war waged by armed barbarians to 
recover a woman — in the dispute of two chieftains 
who had quarrelled about a slave. Homer perceived, 
and has portrayed, nature in its noblest aspects, 
man in all his attributes, and the gods everywhere. 
Let it not be asked how Homer was led to enter- 



THE TIME OF CORXEILLE. 5 

tain such ideas, and what combinations of customs, 
circumstances, and positions, concurred to form the 
system of his poetry ; he could have had no other. 
If Homer had disappeared, and it were possible to 
invent him, it would be said : Such a man he must 
have been — an exemphfication of that which could 
not fail to be produced by the development of the 
happiest faculties among a people at hberty to 
display them all, and among whom nothing had 
occurred to distort their character, to distm-b their 
harmony, or to divert their course. 

Such could not be the case with regard to modern 
nations : when they estabhshed themselves upon the 
ruins of a world that had already grown old, they 
were ignorant and incapable of comprehending those 
institutions from which their coarse manners were 
about to receive some forms, equally rude and more 
incoherent. A divine religion, coming down into 
the midst of nations at once enlightened and cor- 
rupted by a long term of existence ; a subhme 
morahty, based on the precepts of the Gospel, too 
perfect for the manners of those who were about to 
receive it, and yet sufficiently positive to exact their 
obedience ; towns and palaces, which had been 
conquered, and were inhabited, by savages incom- 
petent to appreciate the skill which had erected 
them ; luxury, for which they acquired a taste, 
and to which they became habituated, before they 



6 POETRY IN FRAKCE BEFORE 

had learned its use ; enjoyments, distinctions, 
and titles, which had been invented by the vanity of 
an effeminate w^orld, and which were paraded by 
barbarian vanity rather in imitation than from 
necessity ; all these facts could not fail to strike 
these new peoples as being one of those strange and 
confused spectacles at w^hich ignorant spectators 
cannot even manifest sufficient astonishment, because 
they do not perceive its hidden springs and secret 
workings ; all these causes necessarily led to that 
confusedness of ideas, to those fantastic and incom- 
plete associations of thought, of which modern lite- 
ratures, in their early essays, and even in their 
masterpieces, present traces which, though varying 
in distinctness, are everywhere visible. 

The Greek, at the origin and during the progress 
of his civilisation, appears to us like man issuing 
from the hands of God, in all the simplicity and 
grandeur of his nature — coming into existence in a 
world that is ready to yield to him all the riches 
that his intelKgence can extract from her ample 
stores, but which discloses those riches gradually, 
and in proportion to the development of his intellect. 
The German barbarian, transported suddenly into the 
midst of Roman civilisation, presents to us a type of 
the children of men, cast abruptly into a world 
formed for creatures that already possess wide expe- 
rience and full development ; they pass their life 



THE TIME OF COKNEILLE. 7 

surrounded by objects which they will use before 
they have studied their properties, and which they 
will abuse before they have learned their use, 
repeating words which suggest no meaning to their 
minds, subject to laws the object of which they do 
not comprehend, and striding to employ in their 
service things which more enlightened generations 
had invented for themselves, and adapted to their 
own convenience. 

Amidst this infancy of modern nations, how can 
we distinguish what belongs to a nature continually 
stifled beneath the pressure of a factitious position, 
or to an education so very unappropriate to the 
necessities and faculties of those who received it 1 
In such a state of things, the reason of man could 
keep pace neither with his position, nor with the 
interests which that position involved. At the 
epoch which Homer depicts, when men were 
probably unacquainted with the use of letters, and 
the coinage of money ; when princes and heroes 
themselves prepared their own meals and those of 
their guests ; when the daughters of kings washed 
the garments of the household — his personages, 
perfectly in harmony with the manners of their 
time and the state of their civilisation, have simple 
and consistent ideas, formed with perfect good sense : 
but how could these qualities and this state of mind 
have existed among those feudal lords of the Middle 



8 POETRY m FEANCE BEFOEE 

Ages, whose titles were emblazoned in characters 
which they could not read — who coined money and 
plmidered travellers — who dwelt in fortified castles, 
and were served by a train of domestics and slaves 
more skilful in the art of cookery than the divine 
Achilles himself? 

It is this complication of causes in the manners of 
the Middle Ages, this singular mixture of natural bar- 
barism and acquired civilisation, of antiquated notions 
and novel ideas, which renders it very difficult to 
explain the course pursued by the various literatures 
that issued from these times. They came into being 
in the midst of a crowd of obscure and discordant 
circumstances which it would be necessary to distin- 
guish and connect, in order properly to link together 
the chain of facts, and to discern their progressive 
influence. Do we believe that we have discovered 
some of those decisive indications which serve to 
explain the character and conduct of peoples ? We 
soon perceive that even these indications do not dis- 
close the secret of the causes which have determined 
the genius of literatures ; for the great events of 
history have acted upon letters only by unknown and 
indirect affinities, which it is almost impossible to 
apprehend. On beholding Dante in Italy and Milton 
in England, and observing the great resemblance that 
exists in the genius of these two poets, though born 
under climates so different, and that is still more 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 9 

evident between the subjects of their poetry, we are 
disposed to seek for the reasons of this conformity in 
general causes, and similarity of position. We per- 
suade ourselves that the religious controversies and 
civil troubles in the midst of which Dante and Milton 
both lived, by directing the imagination of these men 
to the most serious interests of life, produced the 
circumstances best calculated to fertilise their genius. 
In the grandeur of the thoughts which must have 
formed the subject of their meditations, in the violence 
of the passions which agitated their souls, we find the 
source of that terrible sublimity and sombre energy 
which are equally remarkable in the " Paradise Lost '^ 
and in the " Divina Commedia," and which are equally 
associated, in both poems, with that theological sub- 
tlety, that hyperbohc exaggeration, and that abuse of 
allegory, wdiich are the natural defects of an imagina- 
tion that has hitherto known no check, and of a mind 
that is dazzled by the unexpected play of its own 
faculties. But when we think we have thus satisfac- 
torily accounted for these great poetical masterpieces 
of Italy and England, we must inquire why similar 
circumstances produced nothing of the kind in 
France ; why the disorders of the League did not 
bear fruit similar to that borne by the revolutions of 
England and the civil wars of Florence ; and why, 
though almost contemporary w^ith Milton, and living 
at a time when literature was at least in as forw^ard 



10 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

a state as when Dante wrote, Malherbe bears so little 
resemblance to either '? We shall look for the secret 
of the different effects which have resulted in the 
different literatures, in the special nature of the 
governments, in the manners of the peoples, in the 
particular character of the troubles which agitated 
them, and in the personal position in which the 
authors and actors of these troubles were placed ; 
and we shall thus be led to acknowledge the influence 
of those innumerable secondary causes, whose nature 
or power it is impossible accurately to define, and 
whose reality it is sometimes even impossible to affirm. 
Such are the principal difficulties encountered by 
the historian who is anxious to discover the causes 
that determined the character and direction of 
modern literatures, at their origin and during the 
epochs nearest the period of their greatest glory. 
Compelled to content himself with views of the 
subject that are seldom complete, and with researches 
that are rarely well-directed, he can do no more, after 
great study, than arrive at a few general results, 
and some certain affinities ; and afterwards connect 
with these fixed and luminous points, all the facts 
which seem attached to them by any bond, more or 
less clear and more or less remote. This is what I 
shall attempt to do in giving a sketch of the progress 
of poetry in France until the period when Corneille 
inaugurated the glorious age of its fullest splendour. 



THE TIME OF COKNEILLE. 11 

In their complicated and obscure position, the lite- 
rary spirit was developed, among modern nations, in 
a very rapid and incomplete manner. We find it 
animated and active, even to refinement, in certain 
directions ; whilst, at the same time, it is inert and 
rude everywhere else. In the midst of the darkness 
of general ignorance, partial enlightenment of mind 
resembles those will-o'-the-wisps which deceive as 
regards the spot they illuminate as well as respecting 
those which they leave in obscurity. Too easily satis- 
fied with what it perceives, the mind errs through 
ignorance, and exaggerates the importance of what 
it has discovered as well as the uselessness of that of 
which it is ignorant. Those great features of nature, 
those first outhnes of society, which the simplicity and 
small number of objects allowed the ancients to catch 
with so much felicity and to depict with such fidelity, 
could not be so clearly discerned by the moderns. 
Sketches, frequently of a puerile character, but 
treated with a seriousness that increased their 
puerihty, heralded the first efforts of that poetical 
spirit which taste could not accompany ; for taste is 
the result of a full knowledge of things, and of a just 
estimate of their true value. The want of truth, 
however, soon brought poets back to the observation 
of their own feelings — the only subject that they could 
thoroughly understand — and introduced into poetry 
the description of a kind of emotions almost unknown 



12 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

to the poets of antiquity. Love, which, in the form 
that has been given to it by our modern manners, 
is the most fruitful of all the passions in fine and deli- 
cate shades, was also best adapted to give occupation 
to minds disposed to the observation of details. In 
France especially, where it had become the principal' 
business of an idle nobility, love was almost exclu- 
sively the subject of the earliest efforts of poetic 
genius. Often unaffected and truthful in its 
sentiments, it also frequently introduced into its 
inventions that subtlety, that search after ingenious 
and unexpected traits of character, which has consti- 
tuted the chief defect of our literature. Eaimbault de 
Vaqueiras, a poet and gentleman of Provence, loved 
and was tolerated by Beatrice, sister of the Marquis 
of Montferrat.^ Beatrice, on her marriage, thought 
it her duty not to continue to receive his attentions. 
Raimbault, nettled at this, " because the lady had 
changed her opinion, as well as to show that the 
change was agreeable to himself," wrote her a fare- 
well song, sufficiently tender in its expressions, but in 
which, " at each couplet, he changed the language in 
which he wrote." The first was in Proven9al, the 
second in Tuscan, the third in French, the fourth in 
Gascon, the fifth in Spanish, " and the last couplet 

* '' I' dico I'uno e I'altro Raimbaldo 

Che cautar per Beatrice in Monferrato." 

Petrarch, " Trionfo d'Amore," cap. iv. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 13 

was a mixture of words borrowed from all these five 
languages ; so lively an invention/' adds Pasquier, 
" that if it had been presented to the knights and 
ladies who were judges of love, I am willing to 
believe that they would have decided in favour of the 
renewal of the loves of Beatrice with this gentle poet/'^ 
Thus, knights and ladies, if Pasquier judges them 
aright, would have granted everything to the inge- 
nuity of the poet, without giving much heed to love 
itself, which probably occupied only a small place in 
such a cjentillesse. 

Much love, therefore, was not necessary to inspire 
a poet ; but the little love that he really felt, he 
could make large enough to fill his verses, just as 
scruples magnify devotion and occupy life. Pierre 
Vidal, a troubadour of Marseilles, who loved Ade- 
laide de Roque-Martine, the wife of the Viscount of 
Marseilles, was so unfortunate in his amours as to 
afford sport to the Viscount himself One day the 
poet found the Viscountess asleep and snatched a 
kiss ; she awoke and was very angry. Probably 
Vidal annoyed her still more as a lover than he 
amused her as a poet ; for, delighted at having found 
a pretext for getting rid of a troublesome admirer, 
whose poetry was his only merit, she persisted so 
inexorably in her anger, that even her husband could 
not obtain Vidal's pardon. In despair, or thinking 

^ " Recherches de la France/' lib. vii. cap. iv. vol, ii. col. 695, 696, 



14 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

that he ought to be so, Vidal embarked for the Holy 
Land, in the suite of King Richard. As poetical in his 
bravery as in his amours, and doubtless one of those 
"whose tongue," to use Petrarch^s phrase, "was at once 
their lance and sword, their casque and buckler," ^ he 
fancied that he had performed great exploits, and so 
celebrated them in his songs. After several singular 
adventures, he returned to France, still enamoured 
of the Viscountess of Marseilles, although in the mean- 
time he had married a wife of his own, and miserable 
at not having obtained a return of the kiss which he 
had snatched. What Vidal demanded was not a new 
kiss, but a liberal gift of the old one : not to have 
granted him this would have been very cruel. At 
the request of her husband, the Viscountess yielded 
at last ; Vidal was satisfied, and so well satisfied that, 
after having written a song in commemoration of his 
happiness, he ceased to pursue an amour which fur- 
nished no further theme for his Muse.^ 

Still more disposed than Pierre Vidal to be satisfied 
with the gifts of his imagination, Geoffrey Rudel, that 
troubadour of whom Petrarch said, " that he made 
use of the sail and the oar to go in search of death," 
sang the praises of the Countess of Tripoh, whom he 
had never seen, but with whom he had fallen in love 

^ * * * "A cui la lingua 

Lancia e spada fh. sempre, e scudo ed elmo." 

Petrarch, " Trionfo d'Amore," cap. iv. 
* Millot's " Histoire litt6x'aire des Troubadours," vol. ii. p. 266. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 15 

from the reports which had been made to him of her 
beauty by many pilgrims on their return from the 
Holy Land. He sent his verses to her, and " it is 
highly probable/' says Pasquier, " that he was not 
without the written thanks of the lady ; which was 
the cause that this gentleman, commanded more and 
more by love, deliberated to sail to her ; but, in 
order not to serve as a laughing-stock to his friends, 
he desired to cover his voyage under a pretext of 
devotion, saying that he was going to visit the holy 
places of Jerusalem." Falling ill on the road, Geoffrey 
arrived in the port of Tripoli, in a dying state. The 
Countess, hearing of his arrival, " repaired imme- 
diately to the ship, where, having taken the hand 
of this poor languishing gentleman, suddenly, when 
he heard that it was the Countess, his spirits began 
to return to him, and it was thought that her 
presence would serve as his medicine : but their joy 
was short ; for when, though quite weak, he was 
desirous to use beautiful language, to thank her for 
the honour which he had received from her without 
having deserved it, scarcely had he opened his 
mouth, than his voice died out, and he rendered his 
soul to the other world." ^ According to other 
accounts, the Countess was more tender, and finding 
Geoffrey on the point of death, kissed him. Her kiss 

^ "Recherches de la France," lib. vii. cap. iv. vol. ii. col. 694, 695. 
Millofs "Histoire litt^raire des Troubadours," vol. i. p. 85. 



16 POETEY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

restored him to consciousness ; he opened his eyes 
and died, thanking Providence for his happiness. Of 
a truth, Geoffrey was easily satisfied. 

Such was poetic love in Provence, at the com- 
mencement of the thirteenth century. A shght 
acquaintance with the manners of this period will 
suffice to convince us that it was not from real life 
that the poets of the time usually derived their in- 
spiration or their subjects. Nothing is more prone 
to exaggeration and subtlety than that poetry which 
is founded solely on the sentiments of the heart or 
the combinations of the mind. In the description of 
an action the poet has, for judges of the veracity of 
his narrative, all those who know how things occur in 
the world beneath their eyes ; and the boldest man 
would not venture, without some hesitation, or with- 
out calling in the aid of some supernatural power, to 
give his hero strength to knock down a tower with a 
single blow, or to spring with a single leap over the 
ramparts of a town. But who can deny to the poet 
the delicacy of his own thoughts, or the violence of 
his own inward feelings ? Who can maintain against 
him, that things could not have presented themselves 
to his mind, or have passed through his heart, in the 
manner in which he represents them to have done ? 
What natural and sensible fact can be exhibited 
before his eyes to convince him of error 1 Until the 
multiplicity of examples has led to comparison and 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 17 

reflection ; until reflection has learned to distinguish 
the true from the false ; until a certain poetical scale 
of human feelings has been established, to indicate 
where thej must stop, even in verse, — it is impossible 
for the imagination not to lose itself in that field 
which is open on all sides to its caprices ; and 
nothing can better explain how our early poetry, 
whether Provencal or French, passes incessantly, and 
almost without any interval, from truthful and touch- 
ing sentiments and simple and natural details, to 
the most fantastic ideas and the most extravagant 
conceptions. 

Another kind of poetry, namely Satire, necessarily 
arose at an early period in France, under the 
influence of those habits of society and conversation 
which were so early cultivated, and of that semi- 
despotic, semi-aristocratic form of monarchy, which 
leaves the victims of abuses no other resource than 
complaint or ridicule. We meet with examples of 
this satire, under the name of Sirvejites, among the 
Provencal troubadours of the twelfth century : ^ at 
that time, as at all times, complaints were made of 
the injustice and bad faith of men in power, of 

1 * * (I Comme nos Francois, les premiers en Provence, 
Du sonnet amoureux chanterent I'excellence, 
Devant I'ltalien ils ont aussi chant^s 
Les satires qu'alors ils nommoient sirventes, 
Ou silventois, un nom qui des silves Romaines 
A pris son origine en nos forfits lointaines." 

La Fresnaye-Vauquelin, "Art Poetique," liv. ii. 





18 POETEY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

women, of physicians, and of innkeepers. But these 
Sirventes contain nothing but personahties or vague 
generahties. The troubadours lament over the vices 
of their age, but they display very little knowledge of 
human nature ; they attack alternately the clergy, 
the princes, and especially Charles of Anjou, whose 
sovereignty in Provence was particularly odious to 
them ; but these local satires exercised no influence 
upon modern satire, and, at the present day, interest 
only those men who make the history of that age and 
country their especial study. 

After the troubadours of Provence, and the 
French Trouveres, " by small degrees our poetry," 
says Pasquier, " lost its credit, and was neglected for 
a considerable time by France." ^ It was probably 
not, as Pasquier thinks, '' because of that great troop 
of writers, who indiscriminately took pen in hand.'^ ^ 
Some few men of real talent, by driving away the mul- 
titude from a profession which their genius had raised 
above the aim of common men, might well have saved 
themselves from contempt ; but poets who addressed 
their songs to none but powerful nobles, and con- 
tinually repeated to their patrons the same compli- 
ments and phrases, necessarily soon wearied their 
Hsteners. Poetry, in France, gained fresh vitality 
by its diffusion among the lower classes ; without 

^ " Recherches de la France," lib. vii. cap. iii. vol. ii. col. 692. 
2 Ibid. 



THE TIME OF CORNETLLE. 19 

losing that amorous tinge which it retained from its 
early habits, it combined therewith a satirical and 
sportive character, more natural to subjects than to 
princes, and the germ of which might have been 
perceived in its first attempts. One of the oldest of 
French poems, the " Bible Guiot/' or " Huguiot/' is 
nothing but a long satire ; and the " Roman de la 
Eose," commenced during the course of the thir- 
teenth century, by Guillaume de Lorris, is only the 
narrative of an amorous dream, which his con- 
tinuator, Jean de Meun, used as the framework for 
a satire on all classes. 

Satire pre-supposes the existence of determinate 
moral ideas ; and thus morality abounds in the 
satirical works of this period ; but it is less the 
morahty which follows as a natural consequence 
from the narrative of human actions, than that which 
is the result of reflection, and which instructs the 
mind without animating it with any elevated and 
powerful sentiments. The Frenchman, from his 
birth a keen observer, early became proficient in 
penetrating into the secret motives of the conduct of 
men, and in casting ridicule upon vice or folly. In 
our o\di fabliaux, and our ancient memoires, we meet 
with multitudes of passages which display a shrewd 
and often profound knowledge of the whimsicalities 
that mingle with our most serious thoughts, as well 
as with our pettiest passions. This science of man, 

c 2 



20 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

however, was as yet neither sufficiently advanced 
nor sufficiently copious to furnish poetry with great 
and brilliant subjects ; and it was attempted to 
supply this deficiency by the abuse of allegory — a 
power which was so long dominant in French poetry, 
that it becomes necessary for us briefly to indi- 
cate the causes by which it was introduced and 
maintained. 

Allegory has been regarded as the veil with which 
truth deemed it prudent to cover herself, that she 
might appear among men without giving them 
offence. But in France, at this period, truth dis- 
played herself unveiled, and satire laid no claim to 
delicacy. The allegorical personages of Jean de 
Meun name things by their right names, and por- 
tray them under their true forms ; they continually 
descend from the imaginary world in which they 
were born, into the world of realities which consti- 
tutes the subject of their discourse ; and nothing, 
in these discourses, indicates any precaution or pro- 
priety which allegory had assisted to preserve. We 
must look elsewhere for the reasons why this 
pretended poetical power was so much abused in 
France. 

It was necessary, at any price, to introduce variety 
and movement into a poetry that was accustomed to 
deal only with sentiments and ideas ; and by means 
of personification, it was thought that an appearance 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 21 

of reality and life might be imparted to these ideas 
and sentiments. Bel-Accueil, Franc-Vouloir, Male- 
Bouclie, and other personages of the same kind, 
became active beings, whose interests and doings 
gave animation, at least in appearance, to a stage 
which could not be filled by a poetry which was 
devoted to observations and reflections upon human 
nature. Thus, for instance, Huion de Mery describes 
a " Tournament of Antichrist," in which the Virtues 
combat against the Vices ; and, by the description of 
a real battle, endeavours to satisfy the imagination, 
which would not have been contented with the moral 
presentation of such a conflict.^ This singular 
fashion, with which all modern literatures were, 
during a considerable period, more or less infected, 
had obtained such ascendency in France, that, in the 
first moralities that were performed in our theatres, 
the only actors who were introduced were such 
personages as Banquet, Je hois a vous, Je pleige 
d'autant; so accustomed had the public mind 
become to seek, in metaphysical abstractions, for 
that dramatic movement which the ancients had 
found in the representation of man and his destiny. 

" At the marriage of Phihbert Emanuel, Duke of 
Savoy, to the sister of King Henry II., a piece was 
performed, the action of which was purely allegorical. 
Paris appeared therein as the father of three 

• Pasquier, " Recherches de la France," lib. vii. c. iii. col. 690. 



22 POETKY m FRANCE BEFOEE 

daughters whom he desired to marry ; and these 
three daughters were the three principal quarters of 
the town of Paris, viz., the university, the town 
properly so called, and the city, which the poet had 
personified/' ^ 

And yet poetry of a much superior kind had long 
been known in France. I refer to the romances of 
chivalry, which, as pictures of manners, are as 
faithful as could be permitted by the system upon 
which they were founded. But chivalry itself, like 
all the primitive institutions of modern nations, 
leaves the imagination in great difficulty to form a 
clear and settled idea of its character. Fantastic 
enterprises and incredible adventures constitute, 
generally speaking, the substance of all chivalric 
poems ; but we, nevertheless, find therein that truth- 
fulness of details and sentiments which is also mani- 
fested, almost without alloy, in ouy fabliaua?, — a kind 
of narrative best adapted to the artless, sportive, and 
somewhat malicious character of the French mind, 
when left to follow the dictates of its true nature. 

This character our poetry, when it had become 
somewhat purified and regularised, displayed in the 
verses of Marot, the true type of the old French style, 
— a mixture of grace and archness, of elegance and 
simplicity, of famiharity and propriety, which has not 

1 " Reflexions Critiques sur la Poesie et la Peiuture," by Abbe Dubos, 
vol. i. sect. XXV. p. 230, edit. 1770. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 23 

been entirely lost among us, and which, perhaps, 
forms the most truly national characteristic of our 
poetical hterature, and the only one for which we 
are indebted to ourselves alone, and in which we 
have never been imitated. 

When we name Marot, we are not more than 
about sixty years distant from the birth of Corneille ; 
we are entering upon the commencement of that 
seventeenth century, which owed to him its first 
splendour. A revolution in poetry was in prepara- 
tion ; erudition was about to force its way into its 
domain, not to enrich it by a free interchange of 
commodities upon fair and equal terms, but to invade 
and crush it beneath the weight of its formidable 
power. The narrow sphere within which the scope 
of French poetry was at this period confined, left 
abundant space for the innovations of those men 
who, proud of their discoveries in the field of ancient 
poetry, desired to transport them into modern verse, 
and to reign in our literature by the help of foreign 
aid. We then possessed no important work from 
which we could deduce the rules of a pecuHarly 
French poetical system ; we had nothing to put for- 
ward in defence of our nationahty ; the old French 
spirit was constrained to yield, and to allow itself to 
be overwhelmed beneath the riches of antiquity, 
which were heaped upon it hke the heterogeneous 
spoils of a pillaged province, rather than as the 



24 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

products of a friendly country, disposed to furnish us 
with whatever our necessities required. It would 
have been useless to attempt resistance against that 
host of poets who flourished during the reign of 
Francis I., and whom court favour rendered inde- 
pendent of the public taste ; indeed, they formed a 
public among themselves, most precious to poetic 
vanity, and far more sensible to the noise of praise 
than to the silence of pleasure. " Under the reign of 
Henry 11. ," says Pasquier, " the early poets made a 
profession of satisfying their own minds rather than 
the opinion of the common people." Thenceforward, 
that tinge of truth, which French poetry had begun 
to derive from the ideas and images of common life, 
gave place to that spirit of clanship which cannot be 
avoided by persons who are satisfied with hearing 
and pleasing each other ; thenceforward commenced 
the disappearance of that simplicity of language 
which still lent some charm to the most ridiculous 
inventions ; and the language of poetry, becoming fac- 
titious, prepared to don those theatrical vestments 
which our greatest poets have never ventured, without 
precaution, to cast aside in order to restore the pure 
forms of nature and of truth. 

But, at the same time, our poetry learned to array 
itself with a magnificence which, until then, it had 
not known. The treasures with which it became 
enriched at this period, although not derived from its 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 25 

native soil, largely contributed to raise it to the rank 
which it afterwards attained. In the hurried glance 
which we have cast over our old national poetry, we 
have seen what voids remained therein : we must 
now examine how they were filled up, and seek, 
among the men who occupied them, for the pre- 
cursors of those writers of superior genius, who, 
through having fixed the taste of posterity, are still 
at the present day our contemporaries. 

Let us not be astonished at the names of Ronsard, 
Dubartas, Jodelle, Baif, and others : revolutions in 
taste, like those of empires, exert no influence upon 
the duration assigned to the course of human life ; 
and events sometimes occur with such rapidity, that 
one single generation may witness an entire change 
in the aspect of the world. The time of Marot 
borders so closely on the seventeenth century, that 
many men beheld the end of the one, and the 
beginning of the other. Mile, de Gournay, the 
adopted daughter of Montaigne, plays a part in most 
of the literary anecdotes of the first twenty years of 
the seventeenth century. We find her, in Saint- 
Evremond's comedy of the " Academicians,'' ^ dis- 
puting against Bois-Robert and Serisay, in favour of 
some old words for which it appears that she felt 
great affection. In 1632, Chapelain wrote to 
Godeau, afterwards Bishop of Vence : " Luckily, we 

^ Act ii. scene 3. " QEuvres de Saint-Evremond," vol. i. edit. 1753. 



26 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

did not find the Demoiselle de Montaigne at home, 
at the visit which M. Conrart and I paid her eight 
days ago. I pray God that this may always be the 
case when w^e call upon her ; and that, without 
being as insolent as Saint- Amand, we may at least 
be as well rid of her as he is." ^ Mile, de Gournay 
was then sixty-seven years of age. The same literary 
quarrels and connexions which had agitated the time 
of Ronsard, furnished a theme for verse to Regnier, 
who died young in 1613 ;^ and until 1650, or even 
later, the names of Ronsard, his contemporaries, and 
his rivals, were still the subject of general conversa- 
tion : ^ their examples still served as rules, and their 
respective merits w^ere still discussed, just as we 
might now-a-days discuss those of Corneille and 
Racine. Let us not, therefore, feel surprised if we 
sometimes see blended together, in the same picture, 
times w^hich we are tempted to believe far remote 
from one another. At the present day, we only 

^ " Melanges de litterature, tires des lettres manuscrites de M. Chape- 
lain," p. 10. Paris, 1726. 

2 Regnier, the nephew of Desportes, was a great eulogist of Ronsard, 
out of spite against Malherbe, who had manifested considerable contempt 
for his uncle's poems. 

^ See Gueret's " Parnasse Reforme," a curiovis and amusing book, 
written about the year 1670, and full of information upon the literary- 
opinions of this period. At the same time that we hear of Scarron, 
Gombault, La Serre, and other authors of the commencement of the 
seventeenth century, who had then ceased to live, we find Ronsard and 
Malherbe disputing abovit their respective merits and defects, like men 
whose names and works were still a subject of conversation. Menage, 
Balzac, La Bruyere, and the academicians generally, in their zeal for the 
purity of the language, treat Ronsard somewhat as an enemy. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 27 

remark the two extreme links of the uninterrupted 
chain which these times form between ourselves and 
an epoch which has become foreign to us, and we 
forget to cast our eyes on the short interval which 
connects them. 

The Hterature of the reign of Henry IL, which 
now appears so strange when compared with our 
own, stood in no less striking contrast to that which 
had preceded it, and the difference was not to its 
advantage. The most offensive defects must neces- 
sarily mark the first efforts of a poetry which, 
renouncing nature, seeks all its colours in a borrowed 
literature. Nature will one day resume her rights, 
but not until after they have been for some time dis- 
regarded ; affectation and laboured refinement are 
the necessary results of studied imitation. Besides, 
the models which our poets then studied, together 
with the works of ancient writers, were not well cal- 
culated to bring them back to simplicity and natural- 
ness. Whilst a conventional respect for old French 
poetry compared with the " Divina Commedia " the 
"Roman de la Rose/' which Pasquier "would wil- 
lingly have matched with all the poets of Italy,'^ the 
contemporaries of this same Pasquier endeavoured to 
imitate the style of the Italians of the school of 
Marini. It was imitation of this school, and not of 
Dante, Ariosto, or Tasso, that formed the style of 
Maurice Seve, a Lyonnese poet, whom Du Bellay has 



28 POETEY IN TKANCE BEFORE 

celebrated as the author of the great change which 
then took place in our poetry.^ His chief merit was 
a prodigious perplexity of thoughts, " with so obscure 
and tenebrous a meaning," says Pasquier, " that, 
when reading him, I should be very pleased if I 
could understand him, since he desired not to be 
understood/' The oblivion into which Maurice Seve 
has fallen proves that he was more indebted to the 
age in which he lived than to the talent which he 
possessed, for the happiness of beholding the success 
of innovations, which he was probably not the only 
person to introduce. Following the example of his 
Italian masters, he devoted himself to the celebration 
of the charms of a mistress who served only as a 
theme for his verses ; for he taught that French 
poetry should, in future, derive its inspiration from 
real feelings alone ; and he employed his old age in 
inventing new methods of singing the praises of love, 
" seeing that in his youth he had followed in the 
track of others/' Then commenced the reign of 
those aerial divinities who gave their lovers no other 
trouble besides that of laying the dawn, the sun, 
pearls, rubies, and other complimentary epithets, 
under contribution, — 

*' Et toujours bien portant, mourir par metaphore." 



^ " Recherches de la France," lib. vii. cap. vi, vol. ii. col. 701. 
" Gentil esprit, ornement de la France, 
Qui, d'Apollon sainctement inspu'd, 
T'es, le premier, du peuple retir^. 
Loin du chemin trac^ par I'ignorance 



THE TIME OP CORNETLLE. 29 

These Platonic affections ^ere so much in vogue 
during the sixteenth century, that Ronsard, after 
having celebrated, in his youth, two mistresses whom 
he had loved more " familiarly," ^ and sung in the 
same manner, "took the advice of the Queen for 
permission, or rather commands, to address himself 
to Helene de Surgeres,^ one of her ladies-in-waiting, 
whom he undertook to honour and praise more than 
to love and serve :" such an amour being, in the 
Queen's opinion, more " conformable to his age and 
to the gravity of his learning/' As it was absolutely 
necessary that an old poet and erudite savant should 
have a mistress,^ it will readily be imagined that he 
could leave her selection to others. Konsard was not 
even anxious that his fair one should possess " a 
pleasing countenance ; " for Mile, de Surgeres, though 
a lady " of very good birth," was so ugly that when, 

^ Claude Binet's "Vie de Eonsard/' p. 133. 
2 Racan and Malherbe "were conversing one day of their amours, that 
is to say, of their intention to choose some lady of merit and quality to be 
the subject of their verses. Malherbe named Mme. de Rambouillet, and 
Racan, Mme. de Termes." Unfortunately, both these ladies rejoiced in the 
name of Catherine; "and it was necessary to find some anagrams of this 
name, sufficiently eitphonious to be introduced into verse." They spent 
the afternoon in this occupation, doubtless interesting enough to lovers. 
It was, it is true, sufficient for Malherbe, who was then about seventy 
years old, and so passionless that, as Bayle tells us, " numbering his stock- 
ings by the letters of the alphabet, for fear of not wearing them in pairs, 
he confessed one day, that he had as many as went down to the letter L," 
(" Dictionnaii-e historique et critique," sub voce Malherbe, note B.) Racan, 
who was thirty-four years younger, took the matter rather more seriously ; 
" he changed his poetical love into a real and legitimate affection, and 
made several journeys into Burgundy for this purpose." See Racan^s 
" Vie de Malherbe," p. 42. 



80 POETEY m FRANCE BEFORE 

one day, after Ronsard's death, she requested Cardinal 
Du Perron to insert, at the commencement of the 
poet^s works, a letter attesting that he had never 
loved her with any but an honourable affection, the 
Cardinal answered, with more frankness than polite- 
ness : " Oh ! to prove that, you need only substitute 
your portrait instead of the letter." ^ 

It is not, however, to Ronsard's forced and obliga- 
tory amours that we must attribute his forced verses. 
His last and first loves equally inspired him with 
verses full of grace, as well as with verses of singular 
form,^ remarkable for that erudite obscurity which 
Pasquier, his friend and admirer, is careful not to 

1 c( Perroniana," sub tit. Gournay. 
2 These are the first stanzas of one of Ronsard's songs to H^l^ne de 
Surgeres ; it will be seen from them that at least he had not, in his old 
age, forgotten his best years : — 

" Plus etroit que la vigne k I'ormeau se marie, 
De bras souplement forts, 
Du lien de tes mains, maitresse, je te prie 
Enlace-moi le corps. 

En feignant de dormir, d'une mignarde face 

Sur mon front penche-toi ; 
Inspu'e, en me baisant, ton haleine et ta grace, 

Et ton cceur dedans moi. 

Puis appuyant ton sein sur le mien qui se pame. 

Pour mon mal appaiser, 
Serre plus fort mon col et me redonne I'^me 

Par I'esprit d'un baiser. 

Si tu me fais ce bien, par tes yeux je te jure, 

Serment qui m'est si cher, 
Que de tes bras aimes aucune autre aventure 

Ne pouiTa m'arracher. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 31 

compare with that of Maurice Seve, " inasmuch as it 
was occasioned by his learning and lofty conceptions/' 
His is not, in fact, the obscurity of a subtle mind, 



Mais souffrant doucement le joug de ton empire, 

Tant soit-il rigour eux, 
Dans les Champs-Elyses nne meme navire 

Nous passera tons deux." 

The following is a sonnet which Ronsard wrote for his first mistress, 
Cassandra, whose classical name had gone a great way to gain his 
affection : — 

" Je ne suis point, ma guerriere Cassandre, 
Ny Myrmidon, ny Dolope soudart, 
Ny cet archer dont I'homicide dart 
Tua ton frere, et mit ta ville en cendre. 

Un camp arme, pour esclave te rendre, 
Du camp d'Aulide en ma faveur ne part; 
Et tu ne vois, au pied de ton rempart, 
Pour t'enlever mille barques descendre. 

Helas ! je suis ce Cor^be insens^, 
Dont le cceur vit mortellement blesse, 
Non de la main du gr^geois Pen^l^e, 

Mais de cent traits qu'un archerot vainqiieur. 
Par une voie en mes yeux receive. 
Sans y penser, me tira dans le cceur," 

If Ronsard's Cassandra were not well acquainted with the Greek heroes 
and their history, as well as with the tale of Troy, she must have had some 
difiiculty to understand this sonnet, which is, nevertheless, not the most 
obscure of his productions. It was to beauties of this kind that Ronsard 
was indebted for the commentary which the learned Muretus wrote on his 
works, during his lifetime, which was regarded as a mark of high honour. 
" Muretus, who possessed such immense erudition," says the " Menagiana," 
" thought Ronsard's works so excellent that he made notes upon some of 
them." (Vol. iii., p. 103, 3rd edition.) And Muretus himself declares, with 
great satisfaction, in the Preface to his Commentary on Ronsard's first 
book of Amours, "that there were some sonnets in that book which would 
never have been properly understood by any man, if the author had not 
familiarly declared their meaning to myself or some other person." 



32 POETRY IN FEANCE BEFORE 

tormenting itself to create something out of nothing ; 
it is that of a copious and powerful intellect, embar- 
rassed with its own wealth, and not yet knowing how 
to regulate its employment. " He is a plenteous water- 
spring, it must be admitted," says Balzac ; " but he 
is a troubled and muddy spring, — a spring in which 
there is not only less water than mire, but so much 
mire as to prevent the water from flowing freely 
out." ^ Ronsard had learned, from the perusal of 
ancient authors, in what our poetry was deficient, and 
he thought he possessed, in his own lofty and really 
poetical imagination, ample stores to supply the defi- 
ciency. But he did not perceive the best and truest 
method of doing this. French literature, in his 
opinion, could only gain by the indiscriminate adop- 
tion of whatever he admired in the old writers. He 
did not discern, between certain forms of the Greek 
and Latin languages and the character of our own 
tongue, those antipathies which can only be dis- 
covered by constant observation. Science had not, 
at that time, become blended with taste, and until 
her claims were brought forward, it was impossible to 
distinguish clearly between what should be adopted 
and what rejected. Ronsard rejected nothing ; his 
special object was to infuse richness and energy 
into our language ; and encouraged by the example 
of Homer, who had interwoven into his poems the 

* " OSuvres de Balzac," 31st Entretien. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 33 

different dialects of Greece, he says, in his " Abrege 
de FArt Poetique Fran^ais :" " Thou shalt dextrously 
choose, and appropriate to thy work, the most signifi- 
cant words of the dialects of our France, when thou 
hast none so good nor so suitable in thine own nation; 
and be not careful whether the vocables be of Gas- 
cony, or Poitou, or Normandy, or Mans, or Lyons, or 
of any other district, provided they be good, and 
signify properly what thou wishest to say." Mon- 
taigne was of the same opinion : " And let Gascon 
step in if French will not suffice,^' ^ he used to say, 
when speaking of the little care which he took to 
refine his style. Ronsard carried this hcense so far 
as frequently to employ words which belonged to no 
country whatever ; lengthening or shortening terms 
as the metre of his verse required ; often changing 
the vowels of which his words were composed in order 
to adapt them to his rhyme ; and transferring bodily, 
into his verses, Greek words whose French termina- 
tion only sepairated them from their own language 
without admitting them into any other. Thus he 
says to his mistress : — 

" Etes-vous pas ma seule EnieUchie ? " 

And this word, borrowed from Aristotle's philosophy, 
is explained by Muretus to mean, " my sole perfec- 
tion, my only soul, which causes in me all movement, 

^ Montaignt's " Essays," book i. cap. xxv. 



eS4 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

both natural and spontaneous." We certainly, in this 
case, require a commentary to explain the thought as 
well as to elucidate the expression. 

In his epitaph on Marguerite of France and Francis 
I., Ronsard regrets, by a rhetorical figure, that he 
cannot employ these three words : — 

" Ocymore, Dyspotme, Oligochronien," 

and, by the expression of his regret, constitutes them 
into a verse. 

Nor is this all : the richness and variety which the 
Greek language possesses by reason of the facility 
with which it can form words by regular associations, 
were a sad temptation to Ronsard. He became desi- 
rous to transfer this liberty into the French language, 
and so he describes — 

" Du moulin hrise-grain la pierre rondo-plate." 

He did not perceive that the absence of roots pro- 
perly belonging to the language, the deficiency of 
particles, and the permanence of terminations would 
render these aggregations impossible; and that the 
want of sonorous vowels would cause the connection 
of words, devoid alike of elegance and euphony, to 
result in a jingle most unpleasant to the ear. 

Finally, envying the ancients the freedom of their 
inversions, Ronsard wished it were possible — 

" Tirer avecq' la ligne, en tremblant emporte, 
he cr^dule poisson prins k rhaim empast^." 



THE TIME OP CORNEILLE. 35 

This intemperateness of ideas, this effervescence of a 
genius that was unable to continue in the good method 
of which it had caught a ghmpse, drew down upon 
Ronsard the contempt of those writers who, in the 
seventeenth century, followed out, with more wisdom 
and good taste, the path which he had contributed to 
open. The men who effect revolutions are always 
despised by those who profit by them. That disorder- 
liness which invariably accompanies the efforts of an 
ardent mind to start on a fresh track ; that confusion 
which it is impossible to avoid in the employment of 
means as yet imperfectly understood ; that incohe- 
rence which naturally subsists between the habits to 
which a man has long been accustomed and those which 
are entirely new to him, — all these causes give to the 
first inventions of such innovators an imperfect and 
monstrous appearance, in which the eyes can scarcely 
discern the primitive features of a beauty which time 
will manifest by giving polish to the work. " He is not," 
says Balzac of Ronsard, " he is not a poet complete ; 
he is the commencement and material of a poet ; in 
his works we perceive the nascent and semi-animated 
parts of a body which is in process of formation, but 
which is never brought to completion. '^ ^ 

This body was French poetry, such as it was when 
Balzac and his contemporaries began to admire it. 
Ronsard traced its first Hneaments, full of lofty images, 

^ " (Eiivres de Balzac," 31st Entretien. 

D 2 



36 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

mythological allusions, and a poetic spirit previously 
unknown. He was the first to comprehend the dig- 
nity which befits great subjects, and which gained for 
him during his lifetime the title of " Prince of Poets,^' 
just as a similar elevation of style procured for 
Corneille the cognomen of " The Great/' We are pro- 
bably indebted to Ronsard for the ode and the heroic 
poem ;^ his odes, with all their defects, were possessed 
of sufficient beauties to herald the advent of the lyric 
muse amongst us, and were the prelude to those of 
Malherbe, which are our models in that style of com- 
position. If the Franciad taught no one anything, 
the acknowledged difficulty of a French Epic may 
serve as an excuse for the man who first attempted to 
surmount it. But what Eonsard especially changed 
was the general tone of French poetry, to which he 
imparted that elevation, and that lively though some- 
what studied movement, which truly constitute poetry. 
A single example will suffice to give some idea of the 
revolution which he efi"ected in this respect ; I ex- 
tract it from the commencement of one of his 
songs : — 

" Quand j'estois jeune, ains^ qu'une amour nouvelle 
Ne se fust prise en ma tendre moelle, 

Je vivois bien heureux. 
Comme k I'envy les plus accortes fiUes 
Se travoilloient par leurs flammes gentilles, 

De me rendre amoureux. 



Recherches de la France," lib. vii. cap. vi. vol. ii. col. 705. 
2 Ains, before. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 37 

Mais tout ainsy qu'vm beau poulain farouche 
Qui n'a masehe le freiri dedans sa bouche, 

Va seul et escarte, 
N'ayant soucy, sinon d'un pied superbe, 
A mille bonds, fouler les fleurs et I'herbe, 

Yivant en liberte ; 

Ores il com-t le long d'un beau rivage ; 
Ores il erre en quelque bois sauvage, 

Fuyant de saut en saut : 
De toutes part les poutres ^ hennissantes 
Luy font I'amour, pom* neant blandissantes,^ 

A luy qtd ne s'en cbaut. 

Ainsy j'allois desdaignant les pucelles 
Qu'on estimoit en beaut^s les plus belles, 

Sans repondre k leur vueU : ^ 
Lors je virois, amoiu'eux de moi-meme, 
Content et gai, sans porter face blesme, 

Ny les larmes h, I'ceil. 

J'avois escrite au plus haut de la face, 
Avecq' I'honneur une agreable audace, 

Pleine d'vm franc d^sir : 
Avecq' le pied marchoit ma fantaisie 
Ou je voulois, sans peur ni jalousie, 

Seigneur de mon plaisir." 

Marot also has developed the same idea in one of 
his poems : — 

"Sur le printemps de ma jeunesse folle, 
Je ressemblois I'arondelle qui vole 
Puis 9k, puis Ik ; I'age me conduisoit 
Sans peur ne soin, oil le coeur me disoit ; 
En la forest, sans la crainte des loups, 
Je m'en allois souvent cueillir le houx, 
Pour faire glus k prendre oyseaux ramages 
Tons dififi^rents de chantz et de plumages ; 
Ou me souloys, pour les prendre, entremettre 
A faire bries"* ou caiges pour les mettre : 



' Poutres, mares. ' Vueil, wish, desire. 

2 Blandissantes, caressing. ^ Bries, snares to catch birds. 



38 POETKY m PRANCE BEFORE 

Ou ti'ansnouois ^ les rivieres profondes, 
Ou renfor9ois sur le genouil les fondes ;2 
Pms d'en tirer droict et loin j'apprenois 
Pour chasser loups et abattre des noix." 

The difference between the two poets is striking. 
In Marot, all is simple and natural ; in Ronsard, all 
is noble and brilliant. In the last poem, the facts 
are such as might have been noticed by a child ; in 
the first, the details are such as a poet alone could 
have imagined : there is all the difference between a 
simple narrative and an animated picture — between 
our old poetry and our conception of poetry at the 
present day. Those who prefer the simple truth to 
all else will regret Marot and his time ; those who 
desire that truth should be elevated to its highest 
pitch, and that before coming to us it should pass 
through an imagination capable of exciting our own, 
will require that to the natural simplicity of Marot 
should be added the briUiant colours of Ronsard. 

After the two examples which have been quoted, it 
is undoubtedly somewhat surprising to read this pas- 
sage in La Bruyere : — " Marot, both by his turn of 
thought and style of composition, seems to have 
written subsequently to Ronsard ; between the for- 
mer author and ourselves, there is only the difference 
of a few words. Ronsard and his contemporary 
authors did more injury than service to style ; they 
delayed it on the road to perfection ; they exposed it 

^ Transnouois, swam across. - Fondes, leaves. 



THE TIME OF COKNEILLE. 39 

to the danger of losing its way for ever, and never 
regaining the right path. It is astonishing that the 
works of Marot, so natural and easy as they are, did 
not make Ronsard, who was full of poetic spirit and 
enthusiasm, a greater poet than either Ronsard or 
Marot actually were."^ 

How comes it that, after having allowed to Ronsard 
much " poetic spirit and enthusiasm," — after having 
said that " Ronsard and Balzac, each in his own walk, 
possessed enough good and enough bad quahties to 
form after them very great writers in verse and prose,'^^ 
— La Bruyere totally disregards the great influence 
exercised by Ronsard over the lofty character of the 
poetry of the age of Louis XIY., and does not perceive 
how far distant Marot was from anything of the 
kind 1 How was it that he did not see that, in spite 
of the difference of language, Ronsard's poetic spirit 
bordered much more closely on that of the seventeenth 
century, than the simple and unaffected tone of 
Marot '? The reason is obvious : La Bruyere, living 
in the midst of the magnificence of the poetry of his 
own time, never thought of the efforts required to raise 
it to that proud position : he felt the necessity of cease- 
lessly combating against that want of naturalness, 
and that inflation of language, into which our poetry 
was always ready to fall ; and finding, in Ronsard, 
the type of these defects, and in Marot a naturalness, 

' La Bruyer^s "Characters," cap. i. vol. i. p. 116, edit. 1759. - Ibid. 



40 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

the somewhat naked simpHcity of which he did not 
fear would be exaggerated by subsequent authors, he 
attacked what he considered excessive in the one 
poet, without perceiving the deficiencies of the other. 
Besides, a man, however superior he may be, unless he 
has cause to complain of the opinions of his age and 
of the reputation which they bestow upon himself, 
always shares in them to a certain extent : and we 
are rarely disposed to feel great enthusiasm for our 
immediate predecessors, whose faults we have had to 
correct, and whose beauties are frequently displayed 
to our disadvantage. Malherbe and his school natu- 
rally despised Ronsard and returned to Marot, in 
whom Eonsard, on his side, as he tells us himself, 
had found only " vessels whence he drew, as by in- 
dustrious washing, rich sediments of gold."^ We 
must allow the judgment of posterity itself to ripen, 
and not fear to reflect upon what it originally 
thought ; for it also is subject to reaction, and 
requires time to form a definite opinion. 

La Bruyere expresses his alarm at the danger in 
which Ronsard involved the French language, which, 
he says, he might have spoiled "for ever." Ronsard 
could not have done this, for he did not do it ; and 
in order to inflict an eternal injury, a man must pos- 
sess power to prevent truth and reason from sur- 
viving him. Whatever influence may be ascribed 

^ Bmefs '' Vie de Ronsard," p. 121. 



THE TIME OP CORNEILLE. 41 

to the defects of a man of talent or genius, we may 
trust to his imitators to render them speedily so ridi- 
culous that even children will point their finger at 
them. These awkward imitations at first obtain 
from the pubhc an admiration which inflames 
the indignation of the wise, who strive to dis- 
countenance them. Ronsard had taught the art of 
employing grand and noble imagery : and plagiarists 
thought it was enough to accumulate vast ideas, to 
express feeble thoughts in inflated language, and to 
exaggerate those which the imagination was unable 
to conceive. Thus Du Bartas describes the world 
before the creation of man, as — 

" * * Une forme sans forme, 

Une pile confuse, une masse difforme, 
D'abismes un abisme, un corps mal compasse, 
Un chaos de chaos, un tas mal entassd. 
***** 
La terre estoit au ciel, et le ciel en la terre ; 
Le feu, la terre. Fair se tenoient dans la mer ; 
La mer, le feu, la terre estoient logez en I'air, 
L'air, la mer et le feu dans la terre, et la terre 
Chez l'air, le feu, la mer, * * * " i 

And Pasquier, who quotes these lines, declares that 
if, in the remainder of the piece, Du Bartas was sup- 
ported by Ovid, he has, " in these last verses, rendered 
himself inimitable.'^ ^ 

The disorder which reigned in taste called loudly 
for reform. "At length came Malherbe,'' and not 

^ Du Bartas, " Premier Jour de la premiere Semaine." 

2 '-'Recherches de la France," lib. vii. cap. x. vol. i. col. 722. 



42 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

before his presence was needed. Wisdom, taste, and 
respect for propriety were required to be among the 
chief merits of the superior man who was destined to 
gain distinction for himself amidst all this license : 
and that providential law which, in literature as in 
States, produces men of genius varying according to 
the necessities of the times in which they appear, 
brought Numa into the world after Romulus, Racine 
after Corneille, and Malherbe after Ronsard. 

Poets were then entering into a position favourable 
for the introduction of the change about to be wrought 
in literature. The Court, thenceforward fixed and 
undisturbed, anxious to find pleasures to fill the void 
which had long been occupied by public business, was 
about to establish another arbiter of taste than a 
coterie of literary men, isolated from the public, and 
consequently free to yield to the caprices of their own 
genius, without consulting the authority of common 
reason. Poetry in France, being generally irrelevant 
to the great interests of life, has taken but little 
part in the troubles which have agitated the nation : 
a people, ever disposed to external movement, and 
listening and reflecting only when it cannot act, has 
left no place for the Muses but that which it has been 
obliged to give to repose ; and it is perhaps permis- 
sible to attribute to the serious affairs which occupied 
men's minds under Francis II., Charles IX., and 
Henry III., that disdain which the poets felt for a 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 43 

public which could not yield them sufficient attention. 
The Court had, indeed, served as their place of 
refuge ; and notwithstanding the slight taste which 
Henry II. felt at first for Eonsard's verses, a cele- 
brated poet is, in the eyes of his prince, a piece of 
property which he would be loth to lose. Charles IX., 
who wrote verses himself, loved poetry with the love of 
a poet whose taste had been formed by contemporary 
writers ; and his successor, Henry III. protected 
poetry, without having time to form an opinion upon 
it. The simple, practical, and somewhat ilhterate 
rule of Henry IV. was required to dispel that super- 
ficial science, and that inflated grandiloquence which 
had long held sway in the realms of poesy ; and the 
Court, thenceforward at one with the nation, speedily 
resumed, over tastes, manners, and ideas, that empire 
which, in France, it does not easily lose. Malherbe 
was the poet of the Court: constantly occupied in 
ministering to its gratification, and in humanizing for 
it that literature in which it was beginning to take 
delight, he used frequently to say, " especially when 
he was blamed for not accurately following the sense 
of those authors whom he translated or paraphrased, 
that he was not preparing meat for cooks ; as much as 
to say, that he cared little about being praised by lite- 
rary persons who understood the books which he had 
translated, provided he was approved by the Court." ^ 

1 Racan, " Vie de Malherbe." 



44 POETRY m FEANCE BEFORE 

The revolution which had taken place in reaction upon 
that attempted by Ronsard, appeared complete ; but 
the movements of the human mind always result in 
progress, and never in any but apparent retrogres- 
sion. In these unfaithful but elegant translations, 
the simple and flowing style of which enraged Mile, 
de Gournay, who called them "a ripple of clear 
water/' ^ the language began to acquire a precision 
which commerce with the learned languages could 
alone have imparted : and in Malherbe's verses, 
which are frequently adorned with beauties derived 
from ancient sources,^ it preserved, from the character 
given it by Ronsard, a dignity and richness of style of 
which Marot's time had no conception, while it also 
became more and more subject to elegant correction.^ 

1 Bayle, " Dictionnaire historique et critique," article Malherbe, note E. 

2 For example, in the Stanzas addressed by Malherbe to Henry IV. when 
he went into the Limousia, in which we find several passages successfully 
imitated from Virgil's fourth eclogue. The imitation is sometimes suffi- 
ciently different from the original to be able to claim the merit of inven- 
tion, as in this stanza : — 

" Tu nous rendras alors nos douces destinees : 
Nous ne reverrons plus ces f^cheuses ann^es 
Qui, pour les plus heureux, n'ont produit que des pleurs. 
Toute sorte de biens comblera nos families ; 
La moisson de nos champs lassera les faucilles, 
Et les fruits passeront la promesse des fleurs." 

3 From among many examples that I might quote, I will select one 
which is not very widely known. It is a strophe from the Ode to Marie de 
Medici (which, notwithstanding three prosaic lines, is a beautiful poem), 
in which, in order to say that a king cannot justly be called yreat unless 
he has reigned in stormy and difiicult times, he exclaims : — 

" Ce n'est point aux rives d'un fleuve, 
On dorment les vents et les eaux, 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 45 

Even the last of Eonsard's partisans, by resisting 
improvement, contributed to render it more complete 
and certain. It was not without opposition that 
Malherbe brought back to the true genius of the lan- 
guage, and to the style best adapted to the nation, a 
poetry which Ronsard had diverted therefrom. The 
poets, accustomed to draw their allusions from the 
obscurest fables of mythology, found it extremely 
difficult to speak in French of subjects calculated to 
interest Frenchmen. This innovation was charged 
against Malherbe and his school as a want of respect 
for antiquity ; thus Gombaud, under the assumed 
name of Mme. Desloges, says to Eacan : — 

" C'est vous dont I'audace nouvelle 
A rejete I'antiquit^ * * 

***** 
Vous aimez mieux" croire a la mode ; 
C'est bien la foi la plus commode 
Pour ceux que le monde a charmes." * 

And Regnier, addressing himself to Ronsard, gives 
vent to his irritation against — 

" * * Ces resveurs dont la muse insolente, 
Censurant les plus vieux, insolemment se vante 



Que fait sa veritable preuve 
L'art de conduire les vaisseaiix 
II faut, en la plaine salde, 
Avoir lutt^ centre Malee, 
Et pris du naufrage dernier, 
S'etre vu dessous les Pleiades, 
Eloigne de ports et de rades, 
Pour Stre cm bon marinier." 



^ " Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Poetes Fran9ais, depuis Villon 
jusqu'a Benserade," vol. iii. p. 58. 



46 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

De reformer les vers, non les tiens seulement, 

Mais veulent d^terrer les Grecs du monument, 

Les Latins, les H^breux, et toute I'antiquaille, 

Et leur dire k leur nez qu'ils n'ont rien fait qui vaille." ^ 

Malherbe's style, which, through seeking, some- 
times without success, to avoid inflation, occasionally 
fell into triviality, was also a subject of censure. 
Regnier exclaims : — 

" Comment ! il nous faut donq', pour faire une oeuvre grande, 
Qui de la calomnie et du temps se defende, 
Qui trouve quelque place entre les bons autheurs, 
Parler comme k Saint-Jean parlent les crocbeteurs ? " ^ 

Ronsard, by constituting the poets themselves the 
sole arbiters of taste, had rendered it too easy for 
them to write verses which were intended to please 
themselves alone ; Malherbe, by familiarising the 
fashionable world with poetry, made it too easy for 
them to believe themselves poets, whenever they de- 
sired to be such. But this period of the triumph, and 
consequently of the decay of the new school, had not 
yet arrived ; Maynard, Racan, and a few others, were 
labouring, conjointly with their master, to maintain 
its glory ; the victories which they still had to gain 
over the ignorance of their auditors, still furnished 
them with a powerful motive for studious effbrts. 
Malherbe used frequently to say : " Though for so 
many years I have been labouring to degasconize 
the Court, I have not yet been able to succeed ; " ^ 

1 Regnier, Satire ix. ^ j}o{^^ 

2 " CEuvres de Balzac, Socrate Chrestien, Discours 10." 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 47 

and this gasconism was the ever present foe which 
compelled men of letters to watch with unceasing 
vigilance over the purity of the language. 

This Gascon Court, however, would not have tole- 
rated an absolute want of discretion in its treatment. 
"To submit to tutelage," said Henry IV. to the 
Assembly of Notables at Kouen, " is a fancy 
which never lays hold on kings, greybeards, and 
conquerors : " he might have added, " and people of 
my country.^' Respect for the decisions of the Court, 
anxiety to please the Court, and conformity to the 
manners of the Court, became, under the most 
popular of our monarchs, the dominant fashion, and 
almost the duty of the French nation. After times 
of rebellion, it is usual to carry the virtue of submis- 
sion beyond its ordinary bounds : Malherbe went so 
far as to say that " the religion of honest folks was 
the same as that of their prince ; " ^ and a regard for 
proprieties was, as it appears, the only feeling that 
he himself consulted in the last pious acts of his life. 
" At the time of his death," says Racan, " we had 
much trouble to induce him to confess, because, he 
said, he was accustomed to do so at Easter only. 
The person who induced him to comply was 
Yvrande, a gentleman who had been brought up as 
a page in the King's stable, and who, as well as 
Racan, was his scholar in poetry. What he said to 

* Racan, " Vie de Malherbe," p. 45. 



48 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

persuade him to receive the sacraments, was that, as 
he had always made a profession of Hving Hke other 
men, he should also die like them ; and Malherbe 
asking him what he meant, Yvrande told him that, 
when other men died, they confessed, communicated, 
and received the other sacraments of the Church. 
Malherbe avowed that he was right, and sent for the 
Vicar of Saint-Germain, who remained with him till 
he expired." ^ 

If, therefore, when reading the poems of this 
period, the proprieties appear to us to have been 
neither very rigid, nor very strictly observed, we 
must not ascribe the blame to the poets : the Court 
required nothing more. We may discover in Mal- 
herbe a great many defects of taste, and even many 
grammatical inaccuracies ; ^ but he had had so many 
faults of this kind to correct, that, notwithstanding 
all his deficiencies, we are forced to admit that to 
him and his pupils must be ascribed the merit of 
having begun to introduce clearness and exactitude 
into our language, and elegance, sweetness, and 
harmony into our poetry. 

In the midst of this laborious purification of the 
language and of poetry, appear those inconveniences 
which such a work must necessarily involve. Minute 

^ Racan, " Vie de Malherbe," p. 44. 
2 See Pelisson's report on the examination of his " Stances au Roi," by 
the French Academy, a short time after his death. " Histoire de I'Aea- 
d^mie," p. 273, edit. 1653. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 49 

attention to correctness of language is not incom- 
patible with genius ; but this correctness must not 
be made the chief object of its efforts, or considered 
the source of its most precious reward : a mind con- 
stantly bent on polishing words rises with difficulty 
to lofty conceptions, and the ascription of great merit 
to exactness of forms tends to depreciate the value 
set on ideas. Regnier brings it as a reproach against 
Malherbe and his school, that 

" * * leur savoii* ne s'etend seulement 
Qu'k regratter un mot douteux au jugement. 
Prendre garde qu'un qui ne heui'te une diphthongue, 
Espier des vers si la rime est breve ou longue, 
Ou bien si la voyelle k I'autre s'unissant, 
Ne rend point k I'oreille un vers trop languissant ; 
Et laissent sur le verd le noble de Touvi-age : 
Nul esguillon divin n'esleve leur courage ; 
lis rampent bassement, foibles d'inventions, 
Et n'osent, peu hardis, tenter les fictions." ^ 

However severe these reproaches may seem, 
Malherbe did not entirely escape them. " Malherbe," 
says Saint-Evremond, " has always been considered 
the most excellent of our poets, but more for well- 
turned expressions than for invention and thought." ^ 
Boileau recommended that " his purity and the 
clearness of his happy turn '' should alone be imi- 
tated. Balzac speaks of him, after his death, as " an 
old court pedagogue, who was formerly called the 
tyrant of words and syllables, who made the greatest 

* Regnier, Satire ix. 
^ Saint-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. vi. p. 17, 



50 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

difference between pas and point, and treated the 
affair of gerunds and participles, as if it were a 
contest between two neighbouring nations, quar- 
relling about their frontiers. '^ ^'^ Death sur- 
prised him/^ he adds, "while he was rounding a 
period, and his climacterical year arrived when he 
was deliberating whether erreur and doute- were 
masculine or feminine. With what attention did 
he expect to be listened to, when he was for 
ever dogmatising about the virtue and use of 
particles '? '' ' 

In order to form a judgment regarding the matters 
about which the cleverest men then debated, we need 
only notice the gravity with which Pelisson relates 
Malherbe's dispute, about " licentious '^ sonnets, with 
his pupils Racan, Colomby, and Maynard, " the last 
of whom alone," says Racan, "continued to write 
them until his death,'' — defending them, says 
Pelisson, wherever he went, and " declaiming against 
the tyranny of those who opposed them." ^ We are 
at first tempted to follow their example, and to feel 
indignant at Maynard's licentious old age ; but on 
enquiry, we find that " licentious " sonnets were 
those, the two quatrains of which were not written 
in the same rhyme. 

The sonnet, traces and specimens of which may be 

* Balzac, " Socrate Chrestien, Discours 10." 
2 Pelisson, " Histoire de TAcad^mie," p. 446. 



THE TI^IE OF COEI^EILLE. 51 

found in the more ancient French poets,^ among 
others in Marot, had been brought into fashion in 
France by Joachim Du Bellay, who had spent some 
time at Rome ; and the taste of Catherine de Medici 
for this product of her native land, had aided in 
giving it vogue. The value which was then set on 
the sonnet, and the pains taken to render it perfect, 
explain the importance attached to it by Boileau, 
whose opinion may appear singular to us at the 
present day: — 

" Un sonnet saxis defaut vaut seul un long poeme." 

On the other hand, the number of " two or three 
sonnets out of a thousand,^' which Boileau approves 
in the works of Gombaud, Maynard, and Malleville, 
all three celebrated poets in their day, shows us in 
what fruitless labour might be wasted the energies of 
men who had consecrated their lives to poetry. 

Other small poetical compositions, such as ron- 
deaux, ballads, and the like, which Eonsard and his 
contemporaries had desired to banish as not being 
sufficiently antique, regained favour when our lite- 
rature became more truly French ; epigrams and 
songs also kept their place ; and the care bestowed 
upon these little works, together with the imitation 
of the Italian poets, employed the whole powers of 

^ Sonnet is an old French word signifying song. Thibault de Champagne 
calls his songs sonnets : — 

" S'en oz-je faire encore maint gent party, 
Et maint sonnet, et mainte recordie." 

E 2 



53 POETRY IN FRANC%BEFOEE 

the mind in seeking after delicate and ingenious 
thoughts, fit to be enclosed within so narrow a 
compass. Such modes of expression were suited 
only to poets whose exclusive occupation was to 
please a Court not yet far advanced in literary taste, 
and which they were obliged unceasingly to amuse, 
either by the creation of new objects of interest, or 
by the production of works that did not require 
either long-continued attention, or a sensitive ima- 
gination well versed in poetical ideas. The finest 
works of poetry would not, perhaps, have contributed 
to difiuse a taste for letters so much as this piecemeal 
literature — this small change of wit and learning, 
adapted to the commerce of the multitude. It is not 
sufiicient to amuse the general pubKc ; their pleasure 
is not complete unless they also afford amusement, 
and play their part in the performance which 
they witness. While restrained within the sphere 
that I have indicated, literary occupations and dis- 
cussions were quite within their reach ; their activity 
and self-love were called into play in a degree which 
sufficed the movement of their life. "We learn 
thereby, every day, the latest gallantries, and the 
prettiest novelties in prose and verse ; we are told 
just in the nick of time, that such an one has com- 
posed the prettiest piece in the world on such a 
subject ; that some one else has written words to such 
an air ; that this person has made a madrigal upon 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. .53 

an enjoyment, and that his friend has composed 
some stanzas upon an infidelity ; that Mr. So-and-so 
sent a sixain yesterday evening to Miss Such-and- 
such, and that she sent back an answer at eight 
o'clock this morning ; that one celebrated author has 
just sketched a plan for a new book, that another 
has got to the third part of his romance, and that a 
third is passing his works through the press." ^ It 
was in this way that elegant society devoted itself 
to literature ; by multiplying the objects of interest 
offered to its tastes, it is possible to succeed in 
gaining its attention : literature thus became its 
great business, and it constituted itself its centre and 
its judge ; sometimes we find it split into two parties 
on the respective merits of two sonnets,^ in the same 
way as the dispute about licentious sonnets had pre- 
viously divided the poetical world. Indeed, it will 
not always have such grave subjects of contention ; 
one word will keep it in suspense,^ another will fill it 

^ Moliere, " Les Pr^cieuses Eidicules," Scene 10. 

2 That of " Job," by Benserade, and that of '' Urania/' by Voiture, 

3 A great discussion arose at the Hotel de Eambouillet, on the question 
whether muscadins or muscardins were correct. The case was referred to 
the Academy, then just established, and it is inscribed on its registers, 
February 1st, 1638, together with its decision in favour of muscadiTis, 
This was the opinion of Voiture, who wrote the following lines, in ridicule 
of the party who advocated muscardins : — 

"Au siecle des vieux palardins, 
Soit courtisans, soit citardins, 
Femmes de cour ou citardines 
Pronon^oient toujours muscardins, 
Et balardins et balardines, 



54 POETRY IN FEANCE BEFORE 

with admiration ; it will fall into ecstacies at a 
quoiquon die} but a homely expression will excite 
its disgust. The pedantry of hons airs will unite 
with that of hel esprit ; the word bel-esprit ^ itself 
will become the title, at first honourable but after- 
wards ridiculous, given to those who combined the 
search after wit with the search after manners ; and 
thus an easy explanation will be afforded of the 
existence of the Hotel de Rambouillet, at which the 
pretensions of the most refined elegance mingled 
with those of the most distinguished talent, and 
whose authority extended over nearly all the first 
half of the seventeenth century.^ 



Mesmes Ton dit qu'en ce terns Ik 
Chacun disoit : rose muscarde : 
J' en dirois bien plus sur cela ; 
Mais par ma foy je suis malarde, 
Et mesme en ce moment voilk 
Que Ton m'apporte una panarde." 

Pelisson, " Histoire de TAcademie," p. 270. 

^ Moliere, " Femmes Savantes." 

2 " Le hel esprit est un titre fort beau, 

Quand on aime h courir de ruelle en ruelle, 
Mais ce n'est point le fait d'une sage cervelle 
De chercher a briller sur un terme nouveau. 
» ****** 

Un bel esprit, si j'en sais bien juger, 
Est un diseur de bagatelles. . . 
ciel ! diront les pr^cieuses, 
Pent on se d^chainer contre le bel esprit ? " 

Saint-Evremond, "(Eiivres," vol. x,, among 
the doubtful poems, 

3 "The celebrated Arthenice," as Pelisson calls her, "whose cabinet 
was always filled with the finest wits and most honourable persons at 
Court," was that same Marquise de Rambouillet whom old Malherbe had 



THE TIME OF COEIs^EILLE. 55 

There is a great difference between the influence 
of the Court acting upon Kterature as the centre of 
good taste, elegance, and distinction, and the direct 
influence of the prince gathering together around his 
person all that is briUiant and elevated, and making 
himself the sole point towards which all converge. 
A striking exemplification of this diff'erence will be 
found in a comparison of the sway of the Hotel de 
Rambouillet with that of Louis XIV., who succeeded 
to its influence. Henrj lY. had paid but Httle 
attention to Kterature ; Louis XIII. had a distaste 



set himself to love, feeling quite sure that he ran no risk with a lady 
whose virtue was already as well known as her wit. This disinterested 
choice of the best poet that France then could boast, may lead us to con- 
sider the Marquise de Eamboiiillet, from that time forth, as the most 
distinguished of those ladies who received the wits at their houses. The 
most brilliant epoch of the Hotel de Rambouillet was during the life of 
Voiture, who died in 1648. If complaints were made, at a later period, of 
the judgments of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the kind of wit that 
reigned there, it was because, so long as it corresponded with the spirit of 
the time, it was not thought ridiculous. When Saint-Evremond assTires 
us, in his poems (vol. iiL p. 294), that, dming the time of the good regency, 
viz., that of Anne of Austria :— 

" Femmes savoient sans faire les savantes : 
Moliere en vain eut cherche dans la cour 
Ses ridicules afifectees," 

he is speaking, in his old age, of the time of his youth ; and this becomes 
indubitable when he adds that then — 

" * * ses i^asc/iewo: n'auroient pas vu le jour, 
Faute d'objets a fournir les ide^s ; " 

and that it would have been impossible to discover, 

" Dans le plaisant rien d'outr^ ni de faux," 

The time of which Saint-Evremond thus speaks was the time of Scarron 
and burlesque. We must not consult contemporary opinions for the dates 
of revolutions in taste. 



56 POETRY m FEANCE BEFORE 

for it : the skilful and compliant vivacity of the 
one, and the melancholy and feeble timidity of the 
other, left their courtiers at liberty to follow their 
own tastes. Thus we find that, especially under 
Louis XIII., the most distinguished poets were 
poets who, though undoubtedly anxious to get near 
the king whenever they could, careful to boast of 
the distinctions they had received at his hands, and 
disposed to sing his praises whenever they thought 
they could induce him to listen, nevertheless brought 
under his notice works the inspiration of which 
had not come from him, and which had first 
sought the approval of other critics than himself. 
Thus Maynard, boasting that the " ambitious 
marvels'' of his verses 

" N'en veulent qu'atix grands de la cotir," 

may well add : — 

'' lis me font des amis au Louvre, 
Et mon grand Roi veut qu'on leur ouvre 
La porte de son cabinet." 

But the inspiration of Maynard was derived neither 
from " the Court grandees," nor from " his great 
King ; " he only thinks of them when he has some 
favour to request, or some refusal to complain of, 
and if they were honoured with his best verses, it 
was because he wrote against them : witness this 
sonnet against Cardinal Richeheu, who not only 



THE TIME OF CORXEILLE. 57 

would not give Maynard anything, but had harshly 
refused him : — 

" Par vos honneurs le monde est gouveme ; 
Vos volontes font le calme et I'orage, 
Et voTis riez de me voir confine 
Loin de la cour, dans mon petit village. 

Cleom^don, mes desirs sent contents ; 
Je trouve beau le desert que j'habite, 
Et connois bien qu'il faut ceder au temps, 
Fuir I'eclat et devenir hermite. 

Je suis heureux de vieillir sans employ, 
De me cacber, de vivre tout k moy, 
D'avoir dompte la crainte et I'esperanee ; 

Et si le ciel qui me traite si bien, 
Avoit pitie de vous et de la France, 
Votre bonbeur seroit egal au mien." 

And those well-known lines that Maynard wrote 
over the door of his study : — 

" Las d'esperer et de me plaindre 
Des Muses, des grands et du sort, 
C'est ici que j 'attends la mort, 
Sans la d^sirer ni la craindre." 

Under Louis XIV., it would not have been in good 
taste to appear dissatisfied with the Court. " There 
are times," says Cardinal de Retz, " in which disgrace 
is a kind of fire which purifies from all bad qualities, 
and illumines all good ones ; and there are also times 
in which it does not become an honest man to be dis- 
graced." ^ Louis XIV., by the splendour with which 
he surrounded himself, brought favour into fashion ; 

• Cardinal de Rttz, " Me'moires," vol. i. p. 66, edit. 1719. 



58 POETRY IN FEANCE BEFORE 

it was fashionable also to praise the prince, to refer 
everything to him, to hold everything from him ; 
the courtiers aspired to no higher title than that of 
servants of their master ; and, by his patronage of 
literature, Louis enrolled it among his courtiers : 
from his direct protection, it desired to hold the rank 
which it sought to occupy in the world ; to please 
him was the object of all its efforts ; and the taste 
of the prince was imposed on society, just as, thirty 
years before, the taste of society had been tacitly 
adopted by the prince. 

It is not difficult to discern which of these two 
influences is most favourable to the progress of litera- 
ture and the development of poetry. The protection 
of a King is less enthralling than the familiarity of 
nobles : his laws may be more severe, but his con- 
straint is less habitual ; and poetry has perhaps less 
need of liberty than of leisure. Under Louis XIY. 
Racine, Boileau, and Moliere, when they had left 
Versailles, lived much more amongst themselves ; 
and, being much less dependent upon the opinions 
of the fashionable world, they could liberate their 
minds from the authority of its caprices, and even 
console themselves by thinking of the influence which 
those caprices sometimes exercised over their success. 
Delivered from the crushing necessity of daily pleasing 
a multitude of petty amateurs, they could set apart 
sufficient time for the composition of those noble 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 59 

works which a King, whose reign they rendered illus- 
trious and whose Court they adorned, desired them 
to complete for his glory rather than to hasten for his 
amusement. Less under the necessity of seeking the 
approbation of the only judges of elegance, they lis- 
tened with greater freedom to their natural feehng for 
the true and the beautiful ; their audience increased, 
and became more enlightened as it extended ; and if 
the spirit of the times still exercised over their labours 
an influence that was sometimes injurious, fashion at 
least no longer enslaved their taste and genius. 

But, as may already have been perceived, before 
this brilliant epoch in the reign of Louis XIV., during 
the early years of his rule and under the government 
of Louis XIII., literature was based solely upon the 
mental acquirements of society. In such an order of 
things, in the midst of a still unenlightened society, 
how could taste be fixed upon any stable and solid 
foundations 1 Its natural justness would be cease- 
lessly warped by habits and customs, as ceaselessly 
altered by fashion and the necessity of distinction 
from the vulgar herd — that essential characteristic 
of what is called good society. In the fashions of 
the time, therefore, we must seek the source of the 
character of such a literature ; and perhaps we 
shall succeed in discerning, in the state of civilisa- 
tion at that period, the causes of those fashions 
whose influence upon literature is so evident. 



60 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

At the end of the sixteenth century and the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth, some remnants of chivahy 
were still maintained in existence by civil wars, in 
which the pleasures of society mingled with the 
dangers of battle, when the soldier still fought be- 
neath the eyes of his lady, and when beauty was 
frequently the prize of valour. It was in honour of the 
ladies that a famous combat took place under the 
walls of Paris, on the 2nd of August, 1589, between 
L'Isle Marivault, a gentleman of the Royalist party, 
and the Leaguer MaroUes, known by the name of the 
"brave Marolles." Marivault, meeting Marolles on 
the edge of the trench, asked him, " if there was not 
some one on his side who would break a lance for 
love of the ladies." Marolles replied that he thought 
it his highest glory to serve them. " You are, then, 
valiant and in love," said Marivault : " I esteem you 
all the more for it." A meeting having been ap- 
pointed for the next day, " several princesses and 
ladies dressed themselves on that day in green scarfs, 
and were placed in a certain position from which, as 
from a scaffold raised for the purpose, they could 
behold the space which had been marked out to give 
them a sight of the famous combat that was to be 

fought in their honour. The fair S. S , with 

whom the Leaguer had fallen passionately in love, was 
there with Mme. d'Aumale." She called Marolles 
her knight ; and when he had killed Marivault, 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 61 

"the ladies," says the Abbe de MaroUes, "crowned 
his victory with their favours." ^ 

Amid customs hke these, at once coarse and 
frivolous, elegance of manners and language was not 
always the privilege of the most valiant, nor even of the 
most noble. All have heard of the coarseness of the 
Duke de Beaufort, the King of the Markets. " M. de 
Beaufort," says Saint-Evremond, " glories in his 
ignorance of dehcate language. "''" '^ ''" He attempts 
neither politeness at his meals, nor cleanliness in his 
dress. ""■ ''^ ''^ The incidents of a law-suit he calls the 
accidents of life ; if you eat meat on fast-days, he 
talks of informing the politics (the police) ; rooms 
hung with black he says are lascivious, and wanton 
eyes are lugubrious. Laval died, according to his 
report, of a confusion (contusion) of the head ; and 
the Chevalier de Chabot, through having beon badly 
japanned (trepanned)." ^ A desire to please the 
ladies was, nevertheless, the habitual study even of 
the coarsest and most illiterate ; the ladies held sway 
over society, and aided in diffusing through it a taste 
for mental exercises, the only occupations which their 
weakness allows them to share with men. To the ladies, 
therefore, poetry addressed its chiefest homage. But, 
with regard to the fair sex, there is one single homage 



1 " M^moires de I'Abb^ de Marolles," vol. i. p. 384. 
^ Saint-Evremond, "CEuvres, Apologie du Due de Beaufort," vol. vii. 
pp. 5 — 11. See also " Segraisiana," p. 11. 



62 POETRY IN FEANCE BEFOEE 

in which all others, when analysed, are found to be 
contained ; and a slight effort of mind will suffice to 
convince the dullest that no influence is equal to that 
which subjugates the heart, the desires, and the will. 
When speaking to the ladies, therefore, it was im- 
possible not to tell them of love ; the worship of love 
besieged them on all sides ; the word love resounded 
incessantly in their ears ; and it was thought impos- 
sible to represent any great action which love had not 
inspired, or any extravagant deed at which love could 
be alarmed. Brutus and Horatius Codes talked of 
love, in the romances of Mile, de Scudery ; through love, 
Cyrus became the conqueror of Asia ; and Mandane 
was so utterly unable to avoid inspiring love that, in 
the romance of Cyrus, she is carried off no less than 
four times by four different persons ; which gave rise to 
this decree of the Parnasse Reforme : " We declare 
that we do not recognize as heroines, all those women 
who have been carried off more than once." ^ 

However, either because a taste of dominion ren- 
dered the ladies less sensible to other pleasures, or 
because the agitation of society preserved them from 
the empire of the passions, this age, which told them so 
much about love, was the age in which love appeared 
to exercise the least sway over them ; for those who 
talked most about it, proved themselves least dis- 
posed to submit to its power. Love was the habitual 

^ "Parnasse Reforme," ai-ticle xix. p. 157. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 63 

theme of conversation at the Hotel de Eambouillet, 
" a true palace of honour," according to Bayle/ whose 
scepticism finds no room for doubt on this point ; 
and, in fact, from all their witty and tender warbling, 
there did not issue a single suspicion that passed the 
bounds of theory. "There,'' says Menage, "there 
was gallantry alone, but no love. M. de Voiture one 
day giving his hand to Mile, de Rambouillet, after- 
wards Mme. de Montausier, wished to take the liberty 
of kissing her arm ; but Mile, de Eambouillet mani- 
fested her displeasure at his boldness in so serious a 
manner, that she took from him all desire of again 
venturing on the same hberty."^ 

Next to the ladies of that lofty rigidity which Mme. 
de Montausier displayed perhaps with unusual osten- 
tation, came those more tender blue-stockings, whose 
hearts gave admission to love, but on conditions 
which imparted to it either the vagueness of objectless 
desire, or the refinement of desireless feeling. " These 
false pretenders to dehcacy,'' says Saint-Evremond, 
"have robbed love of its most natural features; 
thinking to give it something more precious in ex- 
change, they have transferred the seat of passion 
from the heart into the mind, and changed impulses 
into ideas. This great purification has its origin in 
an honest abhorrence of sensuahty ; but they are not 

^ BayUs " Dictionary," article Malherbe, note B. 
2 "Menagiana," Vol. ii. p. 8. 



64 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

less removed from the true nature of love than the 
most voluptuous ; for love has as little to do with 
speculations of the understanding as with brutality of 
the appetite." ^ 

Ninon used to call blue-stockings " the Jansenists 
of love ;" they were, at least, its theologians. 

We must, however, beware how we beheve that all 
the women were blue-stockings, and that, as Corneille 
says in the '' Menteur," it was no longer possible to 
find in Paris, 

"De ces femmes de bien qui se gouvernent mal, 
Et de qui la vertu, quand on leur fait service, 
N'est pas incompatible avec un peu de vice." - 

In the anecdotes, and even in the history of this 
time, we often meet with evidences of a love less 
refined than that inspired by the blue-stockings ; and 
the collections of poems prove that the poets had not 
entirely forgotten it. But this kind of love belongs to 
all ages ; the other is one of the particular character- 
istics of the epoch in which Corneille was educated ; 
and whether it was then more or less really adopted 
in the ordinary concerns of life, it became the 
fashionable mode of speaking in good society. The 
poets were incessantly obliged to labour in seeking 
after fires, ardours, and languors which they took 
good care not to feel ; and, condemned to exaggerate 

1 Scdnt-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. ii. pp. 86, 87. 
2 Corneille, "Le Menteur," act i. scene 1. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 65 

the language of love without expressing any of its 
real sentiments, the amorous poetry of this period 
was placed under the unpleasant necessity of saying 
nothing that was true, and of uttering nothing that 
was actually felt. Thus Maynard, when expressing 
with considerable freedom, in one of his odes, his 
dislike of skirts, 

" Oti brille I'orgueil des clinquans," 

declares his intention to renounce all those learned 
and lofty loves for which — 

" II faut qu'une amourense dupe 
Se travaille quatre ou cinq ans," 

and to go to the Louvre to seek — 

" De la gr^ce et des compliments." ^ 

To the affectation of feigned sentiment there was, 
moreover, added that of borrowed wit ; imitation of 
the Italian manner had been followed by that of 
Spanish taste ; or, to speak more correctly, Italian 
Marinism, which had been eagerly adopted in Spain, 
had been transported thence into France, overloaded 
with Spanish exaggeration. Gongora, a Spanish poet 
who flourished at the end of the sixteenth century, 
was the head of that school which is called after his 
name ; and Gongora is one of the poets whom 

^ "Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Pontes Fran9ais," vol. iii. p. 13. 



66 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

Chapelain, the great critic of the early part of the 
seventeenth century, recommends to careful study, as 
one of the good authors in Spanish literature, with 
whose works he was well acquainted.^ One disciple of 
this school tells us that the eyes of his mistress are 
" as large as his grief and as black as his destiny f ^ 
another informs us that an adventure which happened 
to a young girl, occurred " one evening, which was a 
morning, since Aurora smiled, and showed white 
pearls in the midst of glowing carmine/' ^ It will at 
once be perceived that Aurora was the name of the 
young lady ; and it is still easier to discover the 
origin of those comparisons with Aurora, the Sun, the 
Moon, and the Stars, of which Saint-Evremond found 
it possible to become weary, and which he considered 
the groundwork of our poetry,^ — hyperbolic expres- 
sions which the French poets rendered still more 
ridiculous, by copying them from the Spaniards with- 
out at the same time borrowing that oriental imagi- 
nation which, in Spain, clothed these phrases with a 



^ See the " Melanges de Littdrature tires des Lettres manuscrites de 
Chapelain," p. 161. 

2 *' Grandes como mi dolor, 
Negros como mi ventura." 

This occurs in a poem by the Portuguese Manuel de Faria y Souza. See 
BouterweTc's " History of Spanish Literature," p. 304. 

3 These are the terms employed by Felix de Arteaga, a distin- 
guished Gongorist, in one of his songs to the fair Amaryllis. BoiUericeTc, 
p. 312. 

* Saint-Evremond, " GEuvres," vol. iii. p. 235. 



THE TIME OF C0R2TEILLE. 67 

sort of reality. They became the famihar style of 
love poetry. When Voiture wrote 

" Je croirois d' avoir trop d'amour, 
Et de vous estre trop fidelle, 
Si vous n'estiez qu'un peu plus belle 
Que I'astre qui donne le jour," 

he probably merely intended to express, in a tone of 
pleasantry, one of those exaggerations from which he 
was no more free than others ; but it is very certain, 
that he did not mean to cast ridicule upon the pre- 
vailing fashion. Polite society spent a great deal 
of time in the serious discussion of the merits of two 
sonnets by Voiture and Malleville, on La belle Mati- 
neuse ; and if a rather more graceful turn of expres- 
sion, and greater poetry in the details, caused the 
prize to be awarded to Malleville's production, no 
one, during the whole of the discussion, thought of 
being offended by the fundamental idea of both 
pieces, which consisted in representing the sun, with 
all his magnificence, cast into the shade by the 
superior brilliancy of a woman. ^ 

^ We quote these two sonnets. Voiture's is as follows : — 

" Des portes du matin I'amante de Cephale, 
Les roses epandoit par le milieu des airs, 
Et jetoifc dans les cieux nouvellement ouverts, 
Ces traits d'or et d'azur qu'en naissant elle ^tale, 

Quand la nymphe divine, k mon repos fatale, 
Apparut et brilla de tant de feux divers 
Qu'il sembloit qu'elle seule esclairoit I'univers, 
Et remplissoit de feu la I'ive orientale. 

V 2 



68 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

Although such examples as this give us an idea of 
the taste of the society which held them in admiration, 
they do not prove that its taste was confined to this 
kind of literature only ; everything was sought after, 
everything received into the gay and idle parties 
of the time, which, though fond of amusement, were 
no less fond of wit, and rejoiced to extend in any 
direction the range of movement which varied their 
existence. " M. de Nogent," says Menage, " was an 
admirable man to revive languishing conversations. 
One day, being in the circle of the Queen, Anne of 
Austria, and finding that the conversation had ceased, 



Le soleil, se hastant pour la gloire des cieux, 
Vint opposer sa flamme h. I'eclat de ses yeux, 
Et prit toils les rayons dont I'Olympe se dore ; 

L'onde, la terre et I'air s'allumoient ti I'entour, 
Mais anpres de Philis on le prit pour I'Aurore, 
Et Ton crut que Philis etait I'astre du jour." 



Malleville's sonnet runs thus : — 



• Le silence r^gnoit sur la terre et sur I'onde ; 
L'air devenoit serein et I'Olympe vermeil, 
Et I'amoureux Z^phir, affranchi du sommeil, 
Ressuseitoit les fleurs d'une haleine f^conde. 

L'Aurore deploy oit Tor de sa tresse blonde, 
Et semoit de rubis le chemin du soleil ; 
Enfin ce Dieu venoit au plus grand appareil 
Qu'il soit jamais venu pour ^clairer le monde ; 

Quand la jenne Phihs, au visage riant, 
Sortant de son palais plus clair que I'Orient, 
Fit voir une lumiere et plus vive et plus belle. 

Sacre fiambe du jour ! n'en soyez pas jaloux ; 

Vous parfites alors aussi pen devant elle 

Que les feux de la nuit avoient fait devant vous. 



THE TIME OF CO.&EILLE. 69 

and that for some time neither the Queen, nor the 
ladies (among whom was Madame de Guemenee), 
had spoken a word :v-'Is it not, madam,' said he, 
breaking the silence and addressing the Queen, 'a 
curious whim of l!^ature's, that Madame de Guemenee 
and myself were born on the same day, and within a 
quarter of an hour of each other, and jet that she 
should be so fair and I so dark f "^ If this remark, 
really re\dved the conversation, and if it was for such 
speeches as this that M. de Nogent deserved to be 
quoted by Menage as " an admirable man " for this 
kind of thing, we may form a tolerably correct notion 
of the subjects of conversation at this period, andean 
appreciate the eagerness with which any new topic 
would be welcomed. A witty rejoinder, a futile dis- 
cussion, the slightest adventure, the death of a dog 
or cat, — all possible subjects were immediately cele- 
brated in verses not remarkable for poetic feeling 
and expression, but animated by considerable facility, 
and by a freedom of tone which gave admission to 
all means of amusement. The works of Yoiture, 
Sarrasin, and Benserade abound in pieces of this 
kind, which teach us how much wit may be infused 
into the very worst verses, and how little is required 
to obtain success, in fashionable society, in that kind 
of pleasures which their caprice has chosen. 

If anything should excite our surprise, it would be 

^ " Meuagiaua, " vol. i. p. 110. 



70 POETRY ^rN FRANCE BEFORE 

that the pleasantries of this small worldly literature 
were not worse, at a time when, besides that hyper- 
bolic magnificence which did ^not consider the sun 
sufficiently brilliant to be compared to the eyes of 
Phillis, there grew and flourished, both in Court and 
city, an extravagant taste for burlesque, the sub- 
limity of which consisted in travestying Didon into 
dondon^ and Yenus into a grisetteP' This taste, 
though apparently so opposed to the excessive deli- 
cacy which seemed then to be in vogue, is, never- 
theless, not at all surprising. The courtiers of this 
period, borrowing all their elegance and refinement 
of mind from men of letters, resembled, for the most 
part, those parvenus, whose tone and manners, not- 
withstanding the magnificence of their outward 
appearance, clearly reveal their origin and habits. 
Although Mile, de Eambouillet, perhaps from haugh- 
tiness as much as virtue, took offence at the most 
innocent freedoms, yet, in the general manners of 
society, a modesty much less repulsive and limiting 
its cares to the more essential parts of virtue, never- 
theless retained a facility which at the present day 
would be thought dangerous, or, at the very least, 
strange. When, in Mairet's " Sylvie,'^ Sylvia's lover, 
complaining of her rigid virtue, says : — 

" Souffre sans murmurer que ma bouche idoMtre 
Imprime ses baisers dessus ton sein d'albatre," 



1 A stout, fresh-coloured girl. ^ gee the '' Virgile travesti.' 



THE TIME OF COR>^EILLE. 71 

Sylvia is no more scandalised at the proposition than 
were the spectators who witnessed these transports. 
The lover then exclaims : — 

" transports ! 6 plaisirs du crime separ^s ! " 

and Sylvia is really rather afraid that she will be 
seen, but not more than she fears being heard 
talking of love.^ This easiness of behaviour neces- 
sarily exercised great influence over the unconstraint 
of conversation : women who were so indulgent as 
to permit much, could not fail to become accustomed 
to hear much ; and Armando's proposition to cut off 

" * * * ces syllabes infimes 

Dont on vient faire insulte k la pudeur des femmes," - 

proves that they thoroughly understood allusions of 
this kind, and that they had not yet habituated the 
men to show them such respect as not to indulge in 
such allusions. 

Sentiments, then, might be pure without pre- 
venting language from being free, and ideas were 
still more so. Mile, de Rambouillet, who would not 
allow Voiture to kiss her hand, certainly read his 
verses, and pardoned the poet for implying a great 
deal, because he was the first who ceased to speak 
openly, although that also sometimes happened to 

^ " Sylvie," a pastoral melodrama^ Act i. scene 5. 
" Molih'C, " Femmea savantes." 



72 POETRY. IN FRANCE BEFORE 

him.^ This freedom, in the case of those women 
who permitted it, might have been associated with 
a certain innocence of imagination which, in a 
pleasantry, saw nothing more than a pleasantry and 
the gaiety which it occasioned ; but an innocence 
capable of finding food for gaiety in such objects, 
was necessarily connected with a remnant of coarse- 
ness which had not entirely disappeared before that 
delicacy whose enjoyments were beginning to be 
sought after. The most chaste woman of the lower 
orders may very innocently bring a blush to the 
cheek of a lady of fashion, less chaste perhaps, but 
more delicate. 

We must not, moreover, judge of the Court and 
city as a whole, at this period, by a small number 
of persons who were anxious to distinguish themselves 
from the rest, and in whom the fashion of wit had 
found, either dispositions suited to insure its pre- 
valence, or authority capable of commanding respect. 
General ignorance contended against the aspirations 
after wit and learning, which were struggling to gain 
ground. " Latin ! " exclaimed the Commander de 

^ See Voitwe's verses upon the adventure of a lady who fell from her 
carriage, on her way to the country. (" (Euvres de Voiture," vol. ii. p. 32, 
edit. 1665.) Both substance and expression were much worse before his 
time. Saint-Evremond, however, speaking of the coarse freedom of the 
older writers, and especially of Desportes, adds: ''But since Voiture, who 
had a refined mind, and lived in the best society, avoided this vulgar style 
with considerable exactitude, even the stage has not allowed its authors 
to write with too much freedom." (''OEuvres de Saint-Evremond," vol. ix. 
p. 58.) Thus, Moliere's style was not too free for the usages of his time. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 73 

Jars, " Latin at my time ! A gentleman would have 
been dishonom^ed by learning it.'^ ^ " I have loved 
war above all things," said the Marechal de 
Hocquincourt to Pere Canaye : " next to war I loved 
Mme. de Montbazon, and, such as you see me, phi- 
losophy next to Mme. de Montbazon." ^ But, taking 
a dislike to philosophy, because he perceived that it 
led him to believe nothing, the marshal gave it up. 
" Since then," he said, " I would wilHngly suffer cruci- 
fixion for the sake of religion ; not that I see any 
more reason in it than I saw before ; on the contrary, 
I think it less reasonable than ever ; but I can only tell 
you this, I would suffer crucifixion without knowing 
why." ^ Gassendi, says Segrais, " studied astronomy 
with a view to astrology ; " and when, having per- 
ceived the absurdity of the latter study, he attempted 
to disabuse the minds of other men regarding it, he 
repented of his endeavour, " because," he said, 
'•' whereas most people had previously studied 
astronomy as a preparation for becoming astro- 
logers, many now ceased to study it at all since 
he had decried astrology." * The whole Court 
allowed itself to be amused, or deceived, by 
the tricks of an Abbe Brigalier, half a believer 
in what he taught, and half a quack, who had 
spent forty thousand crowns in an unsuccessful 
attempt to become a magician, and who made up for 

1 Saint-Evremond, " Qi^uvres," vol. ii. p. 81. " Ibid. vol. iii. p. 56. 

3 Ibid. vol. iii. p. 60. ^ " Segraisitina/' vol. ii. p. 42, 



74 POETRY m FEANCE BEFORE 

his lack of science by his address. One of the Court 
ladies gave him a piece of red stuff, that he might 
change its colour, which did not please her ; he 
returned to her a piece of green stuff; and the 
strong-minded men alone, those philosophers for 
whom the Marechal d' Hocquincourt had acquired 
such a distaste, ventured to doubt that this change 
was an effect of Abbe Brigalier^s art. A fowl which 
he caused to appear miraculously before the eyes of 
Monsieur, the brother of Louis XIIL, by dropping it 
from his cassock, in which it had lain concealed, 
alarmed the prince so much that he drew his sword, 
which he returned quietly to its sheath on being told 
by the Abbe, with great gravity : " Do you know, 
my lord, that this is not a trick 1 " The fowl was 
increased in size by the imagination, and became, in 
the opinion of the Court, a " turkey-cock," that is, a 
new proof of the supernatural power wielded by the 
Abbe ; and the Queen very seriously told Made- 
moiselle, whose chaplain he was : " My dear cousin, 
you ought not to keep a chaplain who changes fowls 
into turkey-cocks. '^ ^ 

In that simpHcity of ignorance, and that infancy of 
reason which is not incompatible with activity of 
mind, and only indicates want of reflection, it is not 
to be wondered at that persons to whom so many 
things were new and extraordinary, allowed them- 
selves to be deceived and amused in the same way as 

* " Segraisiana," vol. i. p. 51, 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 75 

the common people. The taste of the Court, in its 
diversions, did not rise above those which are now to 
be seen in the pubhc street — if, at least, we may 
judge of them from the description given us by the 
Abbe de MaroUes of the ballets danced by the Court 
of Louis XIII., and invented by the Duke de 
Nemours, " who had rare ideas,^^ says the Abbe, " in 
this as in all other matters." ^ One of these ballets, 
danced in 1626, represented the marriage of the 
Dowager of Bilbahaut to the Darling of Sillytown, 
" for even the names, in these matters," says Marolles, 
"should have some pleasantry in them."^ The 
fertile imagination of the Duke de Nemours " fur- 
nished also the ballets of the Fairies of the Forest 
of Saint-Germain, of the Cwps and Balls, and of 
the Double Women," who were masked, on one side, 
like modest young girls, and on the other, like 
dissolute old women, and who acted, by turns, in 
conformity to the character of these two personages ; 
" until, at last, all having joined hands to dance in a 
circle, it was impossible to say which was the front 
or the back, so agreeably did this pretty invention 
charm the imagination." ^ The same Abbe de Marolles 
takes the Duke de Nemours severely to task for 
having introduced into one of his ballets a personage 
mounted upon a real horse, " instead of introducing 



^ "Mdmoires de Michel de Marolles," vol. i. p. 114. ^ Ibid. 

3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 134. 



76 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

him upon a machine representing a horse, which is 
much more graceful." ^ Thus, the essence of the 
royal ballets, according to the Abbe de MaroUes, was 
the comic or the pleasant, as well as the magnificent 
and the marvellous ; ^ but this comicality was broad 
farce : we can perceive in it no trace of true comedy, 
which is the greatest enemy of burlesque ; and the 
choice of the actors in these ballets sufficiently 
indicates how far distant society then was from that 
sentiment of propriety which preserves dignity, even 
in amusements. 

It was, then, to the most fantastic employment of 
the mind that the right was reserved of exciting 
gaiety amongst people who were as yet unaware of 
its true use. The French poets had long ago set the 
example of that ingenious and puerile abuse of words, 
which, by playing with the reason more than with 
language, strives to impart to them, by their material 
arrangement, a meaning different to that which they 
naturally present. We find more than one example 
of this in Marot ; and Pasquier himself, with a com- 
placency which is ill-concealed beneath a slight 
affectation of shame, relates a multitude of these 
jeuw de mots. I shall only quote one of them, from 
the " Quantites " of Mathurin Cordier : — 

'^ Iliades curce quce mala corde serunti 
II y a des cures qui mal accordes seront !" 

^ "M^moires de Michel de Marolles," vol. i. p. 130. 
- Ibid. vol. iii. p. 119. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 77 

It was at the commencement of the seventeenth 
century, at the time when the fashion of burlesque 
universally prevailed, that poi7ites became popular in 
polite society. About the year 1632 or 1633, 
Menage quarrelled with his father for having 
devolved upon him his office of King's Advocate, 
which he had resigned in favour of his son, but 
which Menage did not wish to undertake. The 
bishop of Angers wrote to inquire what they had 
quarrelled about ; Menage replied that it arose from 
his having " returned to his father a bad office," — 
de ce quHl avail rendu a son pere un mauvais office} 
" That was thought good at that period,'' said he after- 
wards, when quoting the joke ; " for it was then the 
age of 'pointes!"^ Indeed they were so abundant at that 
time that Boileau thought it necessary to take notice 
of them, as marking one of the epochs in literature. 
Nothing, however serious, was entirely exempt from 
their insults ; they held nothing sacred : — 

" Et le docteur en chaire en orna I'Evangile."^ 

This taste at last died out, and was banished from 
literature : — 

'•' Toutefois h, la cour las Turlupins resterent," 

to amuse, at least, those persons who would have 

^ See the "M^moires pour servir k ia vie de M. Manage," at the beginning 
of the first volume of " Menagiana," ^ "Menagiana," vol. ii. p. 35, 

3 Little P^re Andrd, an Augustine Monk. See Des^preaux' note on the 
" Art Po^tique," c. ii. v. 122. 



78 POETKY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

been greatly embarrassed by the necessity of pos- 
sessing wit. 

Thus everything, during the age and under the 
reign of the blue-stockings, attests and explains the 
existence and necessity of that coarse gaiety which 
could be satisfied only by mental debauchery, and 
the temporary forgetfulness of reason and propriety ; 
a sort of intoxication very similar in its effects, and 
sometimes in its causes, to that intoxication by wine, 
sung by some of the poets of this period with more 
spirit and originality than one would be led to 
expect. Brought up in good society, Voiture, 
Benserade, and Sarrazin did not yield to this license, 
which was too coarse for their taste, and too poetical 
for their talent. But the poets of the beginning of 
this century, accustomed to live amongst themselves, 
and probably glad to escape, whenever they could, 
from the constraint of that elegant society in which 
they were sometimes obliged to appear — since upon it 
alone their success began to depend — spent their best 
moments at the pot-house, and abandoned themselves 
in excess to that liberty which they were not always 
able to enjoy. Though Faret has asseverated that he 
owed the reputation of a debauchee, ascribed to him 
by Saint- Amant, to the fact that his name rhymed 
with cabaret^ Saint- Amant needed no witnesses to 
prove that the thing was as familiar to him as 

* Pelisson, " Histoire de rAcad^mie," p. 429. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 



79 



the word ; for he has traced pictures of drunken- 
ness which possess all the truth of a painting from 
nature, and all the spirit of a poet filled with his 
subject.^ Saint- Amant, one of the most vigorous and 
original writers of this kind, was, nevertheless, not 
the only one ; and if proof were wanting of the vogue 
then obtained by Bacchic poetry, it might be found 
in the works of a strange poet of this period, Master 
Adam, a carpenter, of Nevers. Unless generally 
approved examples had already existed, it is no more 



^ " Qu'on m'apporte une bouteille 
Qui d'une liqueur vermeille 
Soit teinte jusqu'k I'orlet, 
Afin que sous cette treille 
Ma sotf la prenne au colet. 

Lacquay, Mngue bien ce verre ; 
Fay que I'dclat du tonnerre 
Soit moins flamboyant que luy > 
Ce sera le cimeterre 
Dont j'esgorgeray rennui. 

Voyez le sang qui desgoutte ; 
n est, il est en deroute, 
Ce lache et sobre demon. 



Hurlons comme des Menades ; 
Ces airs qu'en leurs serenades 
Les amoureux font ouir, 
Au milieu des carbonnades, 
Ne sauroient nous resjouir. 

Bacchus aitne le d^sordre : 
II se plait k voir I'lm mordre 
L'autre braire et grimasser, 

It would be impossible for a man 
the extravagance of debauch. This 



Et l'autre en fureur se tordre 
Sous la rage de danser. 

II veut qu'ici de Panthde 
La mort soit representee 
A la gloire du bouchon, 
Et qu'au lieu de cet athee 
On desmembre ce couchon. 

Que dis-je ! oh 1 que j'ai la vue 
De jugement despourvue ! 
Parbleu ! c'est \m marcassin 
Dont la trogne resolu 
Nous nargue dans ce bassin. 

A voir sa gueule fumante, 
II m'est advis qu'il se vante. 
En grondant mille defis, 
Que du sanglier d'Erymanthe 
II descend de pere en fils. 

II pourrait venir du diable, 
Avec sa mine effroyable, 
Si se verra-t-il chocqu^, 
Et d'une ardeur incroyable. 
Par nous defait et mocqu^." 

to abandon himself more heartily to 
piece is called " La Cr^vaUle." 



80 POETRY IN FEANCE BEFORE 

likely that a carpenter would have been the first to 
sing of wine and the pot-house, than that a shepherd 
was the first to celebrate flocks and fields in verse. 
Master Adam heartily sang the praises of his barrels, 
in imitation of the wits of his time, but imitated them 
only feebly in his laudation of his mistress : — 

" Dqnt les yeux, en mouraut, ost^rent h, Tamour 
Deux trdnes oh. sa gloire ^taloit tous ses charmes." 

Burlesque, hke bacchanalian poetry, does not ori- 
ginate among the lower classes of society ; the com- 
monalty do not live sufficiently on a level with great 
objects to see anything comic in their abasement, 
and are not sufficiently well acquainted with them 
to know how to render them ridiculous. The gaiety 
of the burlesque style resembles recollections of good 
society, taken to the pot-house, and disfigured by 
that intemperate joy, those licentious ideas, and that 
unconstrained coarseness, in which topers indulge.^ 
The delicacy on which the writers of that period 

^ The connection between burlesque and bacchanalian poetry is so inti- 
mate, that it is not always easy to separate them ; it would be difi&cult to 
say with any positiveness whether these stanzas of the enamoured Saint- 
Amant were written by a toper or a burlesque poet : — 

" Parbleu, j'en tiens ; c'est tout de bon ; 

Ma libre humeur en a dans I'aile 

Puisque je pr^fere au jambon 

Le visage d'une donzelle. 

Je suis pris dans le doux lien 

De I'archerot Italien ; 

Ce dieutelet, fils de Cyprine 

Avecques son arc mi-courb«? 

A f^ru ma rude poitrine 

Et m'a fait venir k jube. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 81 

were beginning to pride themselves increased the 
pleasantry of the contrast. More homogeneous 
manners would have furnished no food for gaiety of 
this kind. It was over the delicate and civilised 
poetry of Yirgil that burlesque triumphed ; it failed 
completely against the simplicity of Homer. 

It was, then, at this epoch of combined coarseness 
and refinement, of license and finical taste, that the 
hero of burlesque appropriately appeared. This hero 
was Scarron, whose wit and readiness had rendered 
him familiar with the study of literature ; who had 
been hurried into all kinds of debauchery by the 
reckless gaiety of his character, and whose infirmities 
threw him into good society, after having disabled 
him from again frequenting bad company. Bed- 



Je me fais friser tous les jours ; 
On me releve la moustache ; 
Je n'entrecoupe mes discours 
Que de rots d'ambre et de pistache. 
J'ai fait banqueroute au petun ; 
L'exces du vin m'est importun ; 
Dix pintes par jour me suffisent ; 
Encor, 6 falotte beant^, 
Dont les regards me d^confisent, 
Est-ce pour boire k ta santd" 



In order to become still more convinced of the resemblance, it is sufficient 
to read the piece entitled " La D^bauche," which commences thus : — 

" Nous perdons le temps k rimer ; 
Amis, n ne faut plus chommer : 
Voici Bacchus qui nous convie 
A mener bien une autre vie " 

I dare not venture to quote more, as its gaiety is so petulant and intem- 
perate. See the "Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Poetes Frangais," 
vol. iii. p. 243. 



82 POETRY IX FRANCE BEFORE 

ridden, but talkative, Scarron expended in pleasantry 
that vein of folly which had been arrested in its course 
by a sudden and premature old age. He infused 
into his books that intemperateness of imagination 
which had formerly served to enliven licentious 
parties ; but, gifted with greater discernment and 
good sense than is generally thought, he was careful 
not to cast upon persons or things any but that kind 
of ridicule which might, up to a certain point, fairly 
belong to them. Thus, iEneas weeping like a calf in 
the midst of a storm, in fear of being devoured by 
soles, ^ is only an exaggeration of that weakness which 
tradition attributes to the character of the pious son 
of Anchises ; and any man whom excess of gaiety 
has rendered capable, hke Scarron, of stripping 
the sublime of those circumstances which render it 
earnest and imposing, will, like him, see in the 
Quos ego ... of Neptune nothing but a Pm^ la 
morf^ . . . and the reticence of a well-bred 
man, stopping for fear of swearing too vulgar an 
oath. 

This Par la mort was considered the most ad- 
mirable hit of the burlesque style ; and the reputation 
of the " Virgile Travesti " was so firmly established 
that, a few years after Scarron's death, a writer ven- 
tured to represent Ovid as saying to Virgil : " By 

' Scarron, " Virgile Travesti," vol. i. p. 28, edit. 1704. 
2 Ibid. p. 32. 



i 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 83 

his means you pass into the hands of the fair sex 5 
who delight to have a laugh at your expense ; and, 
comparing style with style, his wanton and jocular 
graces are really well worth your grave and serious 
beauties. ''" ''^ '''" I don't think that even you 
would maintain that your Quos ego is better than 
Scarron's Par la mort" Upon which, poor Virgil 
answers that he does not complain that Scarron's 
merit eclipses his own.^ 

But if men of taste had been the only judges of 
burlesque, even though taking pleasure in it, they 
would have assigned to it its true place ; and the 
greatest success of a folly of this kind would have 
resembled that obtained by one of those ephemeral 
farces, in the performance of which those who move 
in good society, and even men of talent, occasionally 
seek an amusement which they would not endure in 
any other quarter. Instead of this, burlesque was 
adopted at this period with all the fervour of a new 
fashion ; and a fashion, as long as it lasts, carries all 
before it, until, becoming denaturalised by the whim- 
sicality or triteness of its applications, it proves dis- 
tasteful even to those who, after having pertinaciously 
sustained it, can no longer discern in it that grace 
which had originally won their admiration. " Did it 
not appear during all these last years," says Pelisson, 
" that we were playing at that game in which even 

' " Pamasse Kdforme/' p. 27. 

G 2 



84 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

the winners lose 1 and did not most persons think 
that, in order to write reasonably in this style, it was 
sufficient to say things contrary to reason and good 
sense ? All persons, of either sex, thought them- 
selves capable of doing this — from the lords and 
ladies of the Court down to the servant-maids and 
valets." ^ The booksellers would publish none but 
burlesque poems, although they were satisfied if a 
work were written in short verses ; so that, during 
the wars of the Fronde, there was printed a Passion 
of our Lord in burlesque verses, " a bad piece 
enough,'^ says Pehsson, " but nevertheless serious, and 
whose title justly horrified those who read no 
more.'^ ^ 

Such were the principal fashions that prevailed in 
poetry, during the first half of the seventeenth 
century. Notwithstanding their diversity, we may 
recognise in them a general character, the only one 
that was suited to the whole of the literature of this 
period — and that is, the absence of all true and 
serious feeling, of all inspiration derived from the 
objects themselves, and which transfers them com- 
pletely, first into the imagination, and afterwards 
into the verses of the poet. Rehgious enthusiasm did 
not inspire the innumerable versifiers who then 
translated or paraphrased the Psalms ; love did not 

' Pelisson, " Histoire de I'Acad^mie," p. 171. 
2 Ibid. p. 172. Nearly all the critics, following Naud^, have spoken of 
this as a burlesque composition. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 85 

dictate a single one of the ten thousand sonnets, 
madrigals and ballads, into which its name was so 
incessantly introduced; admiration of nature, and 
the aspect of her beauties, did not produce one piece 
that came truly from the heart or from a sincerely 
affected imagination. Whatever subject was chosen 
for a poetical composition, it was regarded merely as 
a jeu d* esprit — an opportunity for combimng together 
in a more or less ingenious manner, words of a more 
or less harmonious sound, and ideas of a more or less 
agreeable meaning ; and no man, when writing verses, 
thought of looking into his soul for his true feelings 
and desires, fears and hopes ; of interrogating the 
emotions of his heart and the recollections of his 
life ; in short, of being a poet, and not a mere maker 
of verses. Some flights of a delirious imagination 
might be truthfully rendered ; humorous hyperbole, 
or mahcious wit, might furnish some telling strokes 
for an epigram ; but nothing that related to the 
natural affections of man, nothing of that which is 
truly serious and real in his existence, appeared fit 
to furnish subjects or images to poets who made 
verses about everything; and the impossibility of 
finding, in the poetical productions of half a century, 
a single piece really elevated, energetic, or pathetic 
in its tone and character, is a phenomenon which 
reveals to us the aspect under which poetry was 
regarded at an epoch when natural and powerful 



86 POETEY IN FRANCE BEFOEE 

emotions were no more strangers to the heart of man 
than they have been at any other period. 

Neither sentiment, nor taste, nor poetical language 
are compatible with that factitious wit, which takes 
no thought about things as they really exist. In 
such a system, no object is regarded in its true light, 
and no emotion expressed as it would naturally be 
felt ; and if nature seems sometimes to make her 
appearance, an incongruous idea or a stroke of false 
wit hastens to dispel the illusion, and to admonish the 
reader that it is not the voice of truth which he has 
just heard. Maynard, in his Stanzas by a Father on 
the death of his Daughter,^ in which the force of the 
position described draws from him a few verses of 
true feeling, cannot long maintain his assumed 
character. This inconsolable father addresses his 
heart, and says : — 

'' Courons, mon cosur, courons done au naufrage 
Dans les torrens qui naissent de mes yeux." 

In these two lines we meet with ridiculous imagery, 
false sentiment, and absurd ideas ; and nothing of 
the kind would have occurred to any poet who had 
thought that, in order to deplore such a loss, he 
should consult and obey the emotions of the heart. 
The especial deficiency of the poets of this time, is 
in meditation : incapable of retiring within themselves, 

^ See the "Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Poetes Frangais," vol. 
iii. p. 6. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 87 

and concentrating their attention on the objects 
which occupy their imagination, in order to investi- 
gate their nature and discover the sentiment cor- 
responding thereto, they pass from one to another, 
and Hnk them together without careful selection or 
natural connection, and, consequently, with as little 
taste as truthfulness. Saint- Amant, the frankest of 
all in his manner, and who would approach most 
nearly to truth if truth could be attained without 
meditation, describes with considerable poetical 
spirit, in his piece on Solitude, the inspiration Avhich 
sways him : — 

" Tantost chagrin, tantost joyeux, 
Selon que la fiireur m'enflamme, 
Et que I'objet s'offre k mes yeux, 
Les propos me naissent en Tame, 
Sans contraindre la liberie 
Du demon qui m'a transporte." ^ 

This is indeed the " demon " of poetry ; but this 
demon should not be a vagabond, uncertain spirit, 
leading the poet from one world to another, without 
giving him time to describe anything in a complete 
and truthful manner. Let him resuscitate for a 
moment the pagan poet, and raise him up in the 
midst of the ideas and recollections of mythology — 
Pan, with the nymphs and dryads, will, in his view, 
people the groves ; place him under the influence of 
the superstitious notions of the Middle Ages — the 



' See the '' Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Poetes Fran9ais," vol. iii 
p. 242. 



88 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

night will be filled with phantoms, and the sound of 
a bell or the cry of a bird will be the signal for 
ghostly apparitions. But if the inspiration be real, 
if it be not the vagrancy of a mind adopting con- 
fusedly all the ideas that present themselves to its 
notice, without possessing a definite conception of any 
one of them, the poet will not group together in the 
same picture Pan and the demigods climbing for 
refuge, at the time of the Deluge, upon trees so 
lofty— 

" Qu'en se sauvant sur leurs rameaux 
A peine virent-ils les eaux ; " 

and the goblins laughing and dancing to the " funeral 
cries ^' of the osprey, 

" Mortals augures des destins." 

In order to describe the darkness of a vault, he will 
not say : — 

" Que quand Ph^bus y descendroit 
Je pense qu'il n'y verroit goutte." 

If he conduct us to the borders of a marsh so 
pleasant that— 

" Les nymphes, y cherchant le frais, 
S'y viennent fournir de quenouilles, 
De pipeaux, de joncs, et de glais," 

he will not immediately add : — 

" Oh Ton voit sauter les grenouilles, 
Qui de frayeur s'y vont cacher, 
Sitdt qu'on les veut approcher." ^ 



1 These lines are quoted from Saint- Amant's poem on " SoUtude." See 
the " Recueil des plus belles Pieces des Poetes Fran9ais," vol. iii. p. 236. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 89 

Truth of this kind, devoid ahke of grace and interest, 
is not poetical truth ; for a poet, a man whose 
mind is deeply impressed with elevated or agreeable 
ideas and images, will certainly not think of the 
frogs that are frisking about at his feet, or, at 
least, will not pay so much attention to them as to 
describe them. 

It was, nevertheless, by truth of this factitious and 
vulgar character, that readers, as destitute as the 
poets themselves of that feehng of the beautiful which 
is only the true placed in its right position, allowed 
themselves to be delighted. In CoUetet's ^ Monologue, 
which serves as the preface to the " Comedie des 
Tuileries," by five authors, we find these lines : — 

" La canne s'hTimecter de la bourbe de Teau, 
D'une voix enrouee et d'un battement d'aile 
Animer le canard qui languit aupres d'elle."^ 

Cardinal de Richelieu, to whom CoUetet read this 
monologue, was so enraptured with the piece, that he 
gave the author fifty pistoles on the spot, saying that 
it was a reward for these three lines only, and 
that " the King was not rich enough to pay for 
the remainder of the poem."^ The Cardinal merely 
desired that, for the sake of greater exactitude, 

^ The father of the CoUetet mentioned by BoHeau. 

' See this monologue at the commencement of the " Comddie des 
Tuileries." Paiis, 1638. 

* Pelisson, " Histou'e de TAcaddmie," p. 182 ; and Aubery, " Histoire du 
Cardinal Due de Richelieu," vol. ii. p. 434. 



90 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

Colletet should introduce this alteration into his first 
line : — 

" La canne harhoUer dans la bourbe de I'eau," 

and the poet found it very difficult to avoid making the 
correction,^ which, at all events, would have been in 
perfect keeping with the whole of the picture.^ 

Any one who reads the poets of this period will be 
struck most forcibly with that want of meditation 
which prevented their taste from becoming pure, and 
their sensibility from becoming profound ; they some- 
times pass before a great idea, but they never stop to 
consider it, for they have not the least suspicion of 
the poetry and grandeur which it contains ; in their 
view, it is a mere mental combination, a fleeting 
spark which, far from kindling a lasting fire, burns 
only to become extinguished speedily. To this cold- 

^ On leaving the Cardinal, wliom he had apparently not yet thoroughly 
convinced, Colletet wrote him a letter on the subject. "The Cardinal had 
j ust finished reading it," says Pelisson, " when some of his courtiers arrived, 
who began to compliment him about some success just achieved by the 
arms of the King, and said, 'that nothing could resist his Eminence.' 
* You are mistaken,' answered Richelieu, laughing, * I find even in Paris 
persons who resist me ; ' and when he was asked who these foolhardy per- 
sons were : 'Colletet is the man,' he replied, ' for after having fought with 
me yesterday about a word, he does not surrender yet, but has just written 
me this long letter on the subject.' " Pelisson, " Histoire de 1' Academic," 
p. 182, et seq. 

- The whole passage runs thus : — 

" A mesme temps j'ay veu, sur le bord d'un ruisseau, 
La canne s'humecter de la bourbe de Teau, 
D'une voix enroude et d'un battement d'aisle, 
Animer le canard qui languit aupres d'elle. 
Pour appaiser le feu qu'ils sentent nuit et jour, 
Dans cette onde plus sale encor que leur amour." 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 91 

ness, which inflicts a mortal injury upon poetry, was 
soon added that neghgence which is an essential 
characteristic of the grace of people of fashion, and 
by which they denaturalise the things which they 
intend to appropriate, in order to adapt them to 
their use. As soon as wit became fashionable, 
everybody wished to write verses ; and, thanks to 
the privilege possessed by persons of quality " of 
knowing everything without having learned any- 
thing,^^ everybody wrote verses. Thenceforward it 
was necessary for poets, in order to be in the fashion, 
to write verses like persons of quality, that is, without 
labour — without what was called " pedantry" ; it 
was necessary to give them the " cavalier turn " of 
which that Scudery was so proud who boasted of 
having " used many more matches to light arquebuses 
than to light candles," and of being sprung from a 
family which had never " worn feathers elsewhere 
than in the hat," and who wished to learn to write 
mth his left hand, in order to be able to employ " the 
right hand more nobly." ^ " May the devil take me, 
if I am a poet," says one of these coxcombical wits? 
" and if I have the remotest conception of what 
enthusiasm is. I write verses, it is true, but it is to 
kill time ; and then they are only little gallant 
epistles which I compose while my hair is being 

* See the Preface of " Lygdamon," addressed to the Duke de Mont- 
morency. 



92 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

dressed. I leave to professional poets all their 
cumbrous parade of fictions and bombastic phrases ; 
I deal only in tender and delicate expressions, and 
I think that I have succeeded in catching that court 
air whose sportive manner so far transcends all the 
wisdom of the wise/' ^ These were the persons who 
criticised poetry, to please whom it was written, and 
whose style it was indispensable to imitate in order 
to give them satisfaction. Malherbe was reckoned 
one of the '^ professional poets " ; and, but for the 
French which he had taught at Court, he would have 
completely lost himself in that inundation of rhymes 
which no one ventured to call poetry. 

" I remember the time/^ says Saint-Evremond, 
" when Malherbe's poetry was considered admirable 
for style and justness of expression. Malherbe shortly 
afterwards fell into neglect, as the last of our poets ; 
for caprice had turned the attention of the French to 
enigmas, burlesque, and bouts-rimes ^ ^ 

From hence, however, were destined to issue the 
most brilhant epochs of our literary glory. Men of 
letters, by their presence and conversation, had 
laboured to diffuse throughout society a taste for 
mental occupations : this taste had possessed for 
themselves all the attractiveness of a novelty which 
men hasten to enjoy and parade ; but we soon 

1 " Pai-nasse R^form^;' p. 65. 
2 Saint-Evremond, "CEuvres," vol. v. p. 18. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 93 

become accustomed to novelty ; and when the good 
which it at first served to adorn becomes in itself a 
real good, capable of supplying sweet and true 
pleasures, we are disposed, when the novelty has 
passed away, to enjoy these pleasures more silently 
and deeply, and do not feel it necessary to parade 
them every day. If the public had not yet become fully 
enhghtened, it had at least increased in numbers ; 
and writers might hope to meet with admirers and 
critics beyond the limits of their own particular circle. 
They thus began to gain greater independence, and 
acquired not only more leisure for meditation, but 
also more Hberty to follow the natural impulses of 
their genius. Nothing was required but favourable 
circumstances to guarantee this liberty, to augment 
this leisure, and thus to place the poets in a position 
to produce works of sufficient merit to guide the 
taste of a public which no longer required to be daily 
amused by their wit in order to take an interest in 
their labours. 

The institution of the French Academy, the estab- 
lishment of theatres, and, shortly afterwards, the 
direct protection of Louis XIV., were the principal 
causes which led to this great and felicitous result. 

I have already alluded to the general tendency 
which, at the commencement of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, directed the attention of all minds towards 
literature. This tendency was not the fermentation 



94 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

produced by the appearance of a superior genius, 
whose influence is paramount and universal ; nor was 
it that strong and continuous warmth which results 
from the equal and natural development of all the 
faculties of a free nation : it was an intense but 
uncertain movement towards the light ; an irresistible 
impulse to action without any determinate object, in 
which effort after perfection was much more per- 
ceptible than vigour of invention. Fully satisfied 
with the wealth they already possessed, the poets 
appeared to be anxious only to set it in orderly 
array, before bringing it into use ; and, of all the 
deficiencies of our poetry, they were conscious only 
of want of regularity and want of correctness. The 
principal object of their labours was the purification 
of the language : following the example of Malherbe, 
"that doctor in the vulgar tongue," as Balzac calls 
him,^ they believed themselves entrusted with the 
guardianship of its glory and prosperity, upon which, 
in their opinion, depended, perhaps in a greater 
degree than was generally believed, the prosperity 
of the State. ^ They devoted themselves to this 
task with all the assiduity that should be dis- 
played in the discharge of a special function, and 

1 Balzac, " Socrate Chrestien." 
2 In the letter which Cardinal Richelieu desired the Academicians to 
write to him to request his protection, we read, " that it appeared that 
nothing was reqiiired to complete the felicity of the kingdom, but to rescue 
the language that we speak from the category of barbarian languages." 
Pelisson, " Histoire de 1' Academic," p. 37. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 95 

with all the zeal that belongs to the maintenance 
of superior authority. The taste for literature, which 
had become diffused throughout society, rendered 
the men whose province it was to explain or enforce 
its laws, the chiefs of a vast and brilHant empire ; 
and " grammar, which gives rules even to kings," 
could not possibly be considered, by its own ministers, 
an object of shght importance. Thus, at the same 
time that men of letters went into the world to enjoy 
the success they had achieved, they were frequently 
brought together, among themselves, by a matter of 
more serious interest — the public welfare. On such 
occasions, whatever might be the subject of conversa- 
tion, purity and elegance of language, and choice and 
propriety of terms, were observed with all the scru- 
pulousness of a religious duty, and all the labour of 
an imperative task. " In contradistinction to the 
present practice," says Menage, " great care was 
taken to speak correctly, and not to commit mistakes 
in these social conversations." ^ After one of these 
meetings, Balzac being left alone with Menage, drew 
a long breath, and said : " I^ow that we are alone, 
let us speak freely, without fear of uttering sole- 
cisms." ^ Although he sneered at the custom, Balzac 
observed it more strictly than most others. " He 
spoke," says Menage, " much better than he wrote. 
If all those who profess to speak correctly had met 

^ " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 306. 2 Jbij. 



96 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

together to construct a sentence, they would not 
have succeeded better than he did. ''^ "^^ ^'' All 
men of talent have been obliged to consider him as 
the restorer, or rather as the author, of our language, 
as it exists at the present day.'^ ^ 

However wearisome these conversations may have 
been, the fatigue they occasioned was that which 
results from deep and amusing interest : from the 
records which we possess of the letters, anecdotes, 
witticisms, and opinions which formed the staple of 
conversation at this period, it is easy to perceive 
how active was the circulation of ideas, though 
intended almost entirely for the mere ordinary inter- 
change of daily life. Never, perhaps, were wit and 
erudition so entirely devoted to the habitual routine 
of existence. Literary meetings multiplied in every 
direction ; some were held at the houses of Mile, de 
Gournay^ and of Balzac, and afterwards at the resi- 
dence of Menage. Others took place in the Pa7/s 
Latin, ^ in the neighbourhood of the Colleges, at 
which men had begun to inquire whether it were 
possible to make some reasonable use of the vernacular 
tongue. Pelisson relates that, on leaving college, 
full of contempt for the French language, he looked 

^ " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 311. 

2 I do not know upon what ground the Abb^ de Marolles says that it 
was at her house that " the first idea of the French Academy was conceived." 
"M^moires de Michel de Marolles," vol. iii. p. 289. 

3 See Pelisson, " Histoire de I'Acaddmie/' p. 356 ; and the " Memoires de 
Marolles," vol. i. p. 77. 



THE TIME OF COR>sETLLE. 97 

with disdain upon " the romances and other new 
pieces'' that were brought under his notice, and 
" returned always/' he says, " to my Cicero and my 
Terence, whom I found much more reasonable." At 
length, he was struck by some works that fell into 
his hands, amongst which was the fourth volume of 
" Balzac's Letters." " Thenceforward," he says, " I 
began not only no longer to despise the French 
language, but even to love it passionately, to study it 
with considerable care, and to believe, as I do still at 
the present day, that with talent, time, and trouble, 
it might be rendered capable of everything."* It 
will at once be perceived how necessary literary 
meetings were to men educated in this manner. 
There were discussed all the difficulties of grammar, 
and opinions were pronounced upon new works : 
thither the wits of the coterie, sometimes inspired by 
the ideas expressed at these conferences, and always 
encouraged by the certainty of finding an attentive 
audience, brought the fruits of their labours. Some 
grave censors criticised these occupations, and com- 
plained that so much activity of mind was wasted 
upon words ; ^ but they did not perceive therein the 

^ Pelisson, " Histoire de TAcad^mie," p. 481, 
' " It was then," says Marolles, "that a young theologian, named Lonis 
MaSRon, could not refrain from expressing his astonishment, having come 
upon us while we were examining certain idioms of the language ; which 
he esteemed of little importance in compaiison with other things in which, 
in his opinion, it would have been much more proper for us to have employea 
our time." " Memoires de Marolles," vol. i. pp. 77, 78. 



98 POETEY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

first' indications of a more important activity, and the 
natural feeling of men who, feeling disposed to meet 
together, and desirous to act in concert, were labour- 
ing to rescue from its long- continued barbarism, that 
very language which was to serve as the medium of 
their communications, — a work which they were 
obliged to undertake, as none of those superior 
geniuses, who can make light spring from the midst 
of chaos, had spared them the trouble. 

About the year 1629, among those who were thus 
brought together by a taste for literature, Chapelain, 
Gombaud, Godeau, Malleville, and some others, living 
Hke them in the world and engaged in business, 
annoyed at not being able to meet as frequently and 
freely as they could have wished, agreed to assemble 
on a certain day in each week at the house of 
Conrart, which was most conveniently situated for 
them all. This was not a literary meeting, but a 
company of men of kindred spirit in every respect, 
although similarity of mental tastes and occupations 
was their principal bond of union. " They conversed 
familiarly," says Pelisson, " as they would have 
done at an ordinary visit, on all sorts of subjects, 
business, news, literature, and the like ; and their 
conferences were followed, sometimes by a waJk, and 
sometimes by a collation of which they partook 
together." ^ They invariably consulted each other 

^ Pelisson, " Histoire de rAcad^mie," pp. 9, 10. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 99 

about their respective works, and criticised only in 
order to advise. 

Such a union of confidence and friendship admitted 
none but select associates ; and, in order not to be 
exposed to the necessity of receiving others, they 
resolved to keep their meeting secret. During nearly 
four years the secret was kept, and they passed this 
period in the enjoyment of a happiness which they 
doubtless more than once regretted in the sequel. 
"Even at the present day," says Pelisson, "they 
speak of it as of a golden age, during which, with all 
the innocence and freedom of the first centuries, 
jvithout noise or pomp, and with no laws but those 
of friendship, they enjoyed together all the sweetest 
and most charming pleasures ^xhich the societ}^ of 
cultivated minds, and a reasonable life, can afford." ^ 

Perhaps, however, in proportion as their taste 
became more pure, and as they felt sufiicient strength 
to maintain authority, they began to feel desirous of 
obtaining it : and perhaps some of them allowed 
themselves to instance the views of the society of 
which they were members, in support of their own 
opinions. At all events, the secret was divulged. 
Pelisson says that Malleville told it to Faret,^ who 
immediately presented himself with a book in his 
hand, ^ and was admitted. Faret mentioned the 



Pelisson, " Histoire de TAcad^mie," p. 11, 2 j^jj^j 

^ Entitled " L'hounete Homme." 

H 2 



iOO POETRY IN FEANCE BEFORE 

matter to Bois-Robert, who also solicited admission. 
Bois-E-obert, a creature of Cardinal Richelieu, was a 
man whom it was neither easy to reject nor impolitic 
to receive, and the old members seemed to feel 
this. " There was no appearance,'' says Pelisson, " of 
refusing him admittance ; for, besides that he was the 
friend of most of these gentlemen, his fortune ^ gave 
him some authority, and rendered him more con- 
siderable."^ Bois-Robert was admitted, and it was 
not long before the Cardinal was informed of the 
existence of the society. 

Richelieu, having gained peaceable possession of the 
supreme authority, was then occupied in consolidating 
his power in order that he might enjoy it. Sharing in 
the taste of his time for mental amusements, he made 
them subservient to his glory and policy, as well as to 
his gratification. He granted to literature an active 
protection, the influence of which upon the literature 
of his own time has, perhaps, been exaggerated, but 
the effect of which upon succeeding generations can- 
not be disregarded. " He considered the State in 
reference only to his own life," said Cardinal de 
Retz ; '' but never did minister apply himself more 
strenuously to make people believe that he was 
arranging for the future."^ And never, perhaps, did 
minister devolve more completely upon the future the 

* That IS, the favour in which he was held by the Cardinal, 

2 PtlUson, " Histoire de rAcademie," p. 13. 

3 " Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz," vol. i. p. 95. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. . 101 

task of displaying the grandeur of his ideas ; his own 
character frequently prevented them from producing 
an immediate and continuous effect ; for he repressed 
from instinct that which calculation had prompted 
him to elevate. Urged by a craving after dominion 
and enjoyment, anxious to seize and appropriate to 
himself that which he had originated, he seemed to 
be ignorant that the germ, when once sown, becomes 
the property of nature, whose action cannot accom- 
modate itself to that of power. He desired that his 
authority should regulate even the most insignificant 
details ; as Cardinal de Retz well observes, " he was 
a very great man, determined to be master every- 
where and in all things, and carrying to a most 
sovereign degree the weakness of not despising little 
things." ^ He protected literature as a minister and 
an amateur, and the taste of the amateur was 
supported by the authority of the minister. The 
sway which he exercised over men of letters was 
tempered with famiHarity, but it was the familiarity 
of a master who gave his own ideas for inspiration, and 
money for reward. When Vaugelas, whom he had 
appointed to edit the " Dictionnaire de FAcademie," 
came to thank him for having restored to him an old 
pension, as a recompense for his labour, — " Well ! 
sir," said the Cardinal, when he perceived him, " at 
all events you will not forget to put the word pension 

' " Memoirs of Cardinal He Retz," vol. i. pp. 13, 16. 



102 POETEY m FRANCE BEFORE 

into your Dictionary." " No, my lord," replied 
Vaugelas, " but still less shall I forget the word 
gratitude!' There was more nobility in the answer 
than delicacy in the joke ; but neither of them were 
aware of this/ 

Nevertheless, by rewarding men of letters by 
favours almost always granted in the name of the 
State, Richelieu supplied them with the means of 
liberating themselves from that dependence upon 
private individuals to which they were almost all 
obliged to submit. During his life they could not be 
otherwise than under obligations to the Cardinal ; 
after his death they became the pensioners of the 
Government ; and the Academy, which he had 
founded merely for the sake of having a literary body 
to protect and govern, became some years afterwards, 
under the more liberal patronage of Louis XIY., a 
literary body that was destined soon to belong to 
France alone. 

From the accounts given him by Bois-Robert of 
the meetings held at Conrart's residence — of the 
talent by which they were distinguished — of the 
harmony of their opinions and the wisdom of their 
decisions, Richelieu was led to contemplate the esta- 
blishment of a new authority — that is to say, of a 
new branch of his own authority. He inquired of 
Bois-Robert whether these gentlemen would not like 

1 Aubery, "Histoire du Cardinal de Richelieu," vol. i. p. 432. 



THE TIME OF CORXEILLE. 1U3 

to form themselves into a body, and to meet under 
public authority ; and he directed him to offer them 
" his protection for their company, which he would 
have established by letters-patent, and to express to 
each one of them in particular his affection, which he 
would manifest to them on every occasion/'^ Nothing 
could have been less agreeable to them than such an 
honour; " and when it became necessary to deter- 
mine what answer should be given, there was scarcely 
one of these gentlemen," says PeHsson, " who did not 
manifest the greatest dissatisfaction/' ^ Some even 
wished to send an absolute refusal : the protection of 
the Cardinal would be no recommendation to them 
in the eyes of the public ; for the reception of his 
patronage gave rise to suspicions of so odious a 
character as to render it an object of dread to men of 
honour. It was behoved that he maintained spies in 
the houses of all the powerful nobles ; and some of 
the future Academicians — as, for example, Serisay, 
the steward of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, an 
enemy of the Cardinal, and Malleville, the secretary of 
the Marshal de Bassompierre, then in the Bastille — 
had great reason to fear that his protection would 
lose them the confidence of their masters. But a 
prime minister is supported by all those interests 
which do not act in direct opposition to him ; and 
Chapelain, who was in receipt of a pension from the 

' Pelisson, " Hifitoiie de TAcadeuiie,' pp. 1(3,17. * Ibid. 



]04 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

Cardinal, gave very plausible reasons for accepting his 
offer, and reminded his friends, " that as, by the laws 
of the realm, all kinds of meetings which were held 
without the permission of the prince were prohibited, 
it would be very easy for the Cardinal, notwithstanding 
all their efforts, to put a stop to theirs if he had the 
slightest inclination to do so." ^ This argument was 
irresistible, and a letter of thanks was sent to the 
Cardinal, by w^hom, from that time forth, the " French 
Academy '^ was regarded with affection, and even 
treated with consideration. 

Immediate steps were taken to give the new institu- 
tion the form which it has since retained ; but, as had 
been foreseen, it became ere long a butt for sarcasm 
and an object of distrust. To excite such sentiments, 
it was not necessary for it to have been the work of a 
feared and hated minister. The Parliament, which 
was applied to in 1635 to register the letters-patent, 
did not grant this registration until 1637 ; and then 
only in consequence of the reiterated demands of the 
Cardinal himself, who threatened, in case of another 
refusal, to refer the matter to the decision of the 
Supreme Council. Some of the magistrates, indig- 
nant at their intervention being required in an affair 
of such trivial importance, called to mind that, " in 
former times, an emperor, after having deprived the 
Senate of all cognizance of pubHc affairs, had con- 

1 Pelisson, " Histoire de TAcaderaie," p. 21. 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. 105 

suited it regarding the best sauce to be eaten with a 
large turbot/' ^ Others, alarmed at everj^thing done 
by the Cardinal, did not know what to think of a new 
body created by him, and in which he appeared to 
take so deep an interest. The Cardinal was obliged 
to write to the first President that " the intentions of 
the Academicians were altogether different from 
those which he might have been led to believe they 
entertained";^ and the registration was granted at 
length, " on condition that the members of the said 
assembly and Academy shall occupy themselves only 
in the adornment, embellishment, and augmentation 
of the French language, and in taking cognizance of 
the books that shall be b}'' them written, and by other 
persons who shall desire and wish it." ^ 

Amongst the people, who, under a despotic govern- 
ment, give no attention to novelties except to take 
alarm at them, those who took notice of the Academy 
connected its estabhshment with their own special 
fears. A merchant had entered into arrangements 
to purchase a house in the Rue cles Cinq-Diamants, 
in which Chapelain resided, in whose apartments 
the Academy then met ; ^ having observed that, on 

' Pelisson, "Histoire de rAcademie," pp. 103, 104. ^ Ibid. p. 81, 

3 Ibid. p. 87. The Platonic Academy of Florence, at the period of its 
re-establishment by Cosmo I., Grand Duke of Tuscany, was in like manner 
constrained to abandon all philosophical studies, in order to devote its 
attention entirely to the improvement of the Italian language. See Tira- 
boschi, vol. viL part L p. 143, edit. 1796. 

* Conrart having married in 1634, it was thought advisable to alter the 



106 rOETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

certain days of the week, a number of carriages came 
to the house, he inquired the cause, and, on being 
informed, broke off his bargain, saying that he would 
not hve in a street in which une cademie de mano- 
poleurs was held every week.V On the other hand, 
the public were disposed to turn into ridicule a body 
that assumed to subject them to their decisions. If 
one of the Academicians manifested, for any particular 
words or phrases, an aversion which was common 
and natural enough at a time when words were con- 
sidered of so much importance, " envy and slander," 
says Pehsson, "at once set that down for an aca- 
demical decision ; " ^ and Saint-E vremond's comedy of 
the " Academicians," ^ in which they are represented 
as disputing and insulting one another about words 
which some wish to condemn and others to absolve, 
shows very clearly what was the feeling generally 
entertained regarding them. Men of letters them- 
selves, wavering between authority and the pubHc, 

place of meeting, which was transferred first to the house of Desmarets, 
and afterwards to those of several other Academicians, until, at length, at 
the beginning of 1643, after the death of Cardinal Richelieu, the Chancellor 
Seguier, who at the end of the same year was chosen by the Academy as 
their protector, having expressed a wish that they should meet at his bouse, 
they continued there until they were established at the Louvre. Pelisson, 
"Histoire de I'Academie," pp. 23, 151. ' Ibid. p. 95. 

2 Ibid. pp. 117, 118. Gomberville detested the word car; one day he 
asserted that he had not used it once in his romance of "Polexandre,"' 
in which it was nevertheless found to occur three times ; it was assumed 
from this that the Academy wished to banish car from the language ; 
which gave rise to many witticisms and that famous letter of Voiture, 
which begins with car. See Voiture, " Lettres," vol. liii. p. 132. 
3 Saint-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. i. 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 107 

seemed at first to feel considerable hesitation about 
connecting themselves with a body respecting whose 
nature they did not yet possess any clearly-defined 
ideas ; ^ perhaps even some of those who belonged to 
it sometimes felt their pride wounded by the slavery 
to wliich they were subjected by the Academy, and 
Maynard, one of their number, wrote this quatrain 
on the subject : — 

" En chevevix gris il me faut done aller, 
Cotnme uu enfant, tous les joui-s a I'ecole ; 
Que je suis fou d'apprendre a bien parler, 
Lorsque la mort vient m'oter la parole ! " 

For two centuries, the advantages and inconve- 
niences of such an authority have been discussed ; 
perhaps it would have been better first to inquire 
whether it were possible for an academy not to have 
been established, at the commencement of the seven- 
teenth century. When, amongst a people not very 
numerous, and by a fortunate concurrence of moral 
or pohtical circumstances, knowledge is diffused in 
an equable and continuous manner — when every man 
finds himself in a position which enables him to enjoy 
his rights and display his faculties, academies are 

^ Bardin, the first of the Academicians who died after its foundation, had 
been accused of having unconcernedly received his nomination when the 
Academy, at the outset, chose him for one of those selected to complete the 
number of forty. He afterwards decliued the office.. It was probably in 
consequence of some instances of this kind that the Academy determined 
to receive none who did not apply for admission. Peluson, " Histou'e de 
I'Academie," pp. 347, 348. 



108 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

unnecessary, and by the natural course of things, 
they either are not formed or do not obtain any 
influence. But wherever knowledge and a taste for 
literature — the consequence of a special study and not 
of the general development of the human race — are 
the exclusive property of a few individuals and not 
the patrimony of the whole nation, men of letters 
will be sure to seek each other out and to unite 
together ; if rivalries cause temporary divisions, a 
more abiding interest will soon bring them back to 
unity ; and so long as no other obstacle exists 
among them but self-love, self-love will itself form the 
bond, which, setting aside their personal animosities, 
will make them feel the necessity of seeking support, 
in their mutual suffrages, against the ignorance 
and caprices of the multitude. Never had such unions 
been more necessary than during the first half of 
the seventeenth century, when society was busied 
with literary pursuits, without understanding what 
literature really was ; they naturally sprang into 
existence in every direction, and as naturally, that 
one which was most distinguished by the reputation 
of its members or by their position in the world, 
could not fail to acquire a power of opinion which it 
would have retained by its own strength, or would 
have lost only when superseded by a higher autho- 
rity of the same kind. The language and taste, at 
that period, imperatively demanded the establishment 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE, 109 

of an authority to which recourse might be had when 
usage afforded only uncertain aid ; and the authority 
instituted in the French Academy reigned in the 
name of usage, which would otherwise have reigned 
without its guidance. 

In truth, the first Academicians, in a fervour of 
legislation which probably consoled them for the 
honour which they had been compelled to receive, 
proposed several laws of a severity as singular as it 
was tyrannical. Sirmond, for example, " desired that 
all the Academicians should be obliged, by oath, to 
employ the words approved by the majority of votes 
in the assembly ; " so that, as Pelisson observes, 
" any one who failed to do so, would have committed, 
not a fault, but a sin." ^ This absurd proposition was 
rejected ; but it was determined, on the other hand, 
that no Academician should be allowed to place his 
title at the beginning of a work, unless that work 
had been approved by the Academy, whose book- 
seller swore to make no alterations in it after such 
approbation had been given. But the necessity of 
passing through this species of Chancery was too 
great a restraint for the Academicians, and they soon 
ceased to submit to it ; so that the bookseller did 
not find it difficult to keep his oath.^ 

Thus were gradually rejected or eluded all those 

' Pelisson, " HLstuire de rAcademie," pp. 57, 58. 
2 Ibid. pp. 129, 139, 140. 



110 POETRY m FRANCE BEFORE 

constraints which were based upon the caprice of 
the new legislators, and not on the power of the 
usages and manners of the time. And let it not be 
thought that the regulation of usage depended upon 
the Academy ; it might sometimes give vogue to 
mediocrity, but it could never struggle against genius. 
The severity with which it condemned Chimene's 
love did not prevent Boileau from extolling — 

" * * * * la douleur vertueuse 
De Phedre malgre soi perfide, incestueuse." 

The approbation of the Academy was undoubtedly 
sought after ; but the works written to please it were 
works which the spirit of the time commanded it to 
approve. Talent really admired by the public, could 
not fail to gain access to a body which necessarily 
sought all possible support from opinion, as opinion 
was the sole basis of its existence. If some few 
superior men were excluded therefrom by other 
obstacles than the difference of academic opinions, 
that exclusion never caused the slightest diminu- 
tion of their glory or their literary power. Moliere 
and La Fontaine, though not of the Academy, were 
not therefore less well thought of or less honoured 
either by the public or by the Academicians them- 
selves ; nor did they the less contribute to the 
formation of literary taste and opinions, as they have 
continued in France to the present day. 



I 



THE TIME OF CORNEILLE. Ill 

It was, then, the meeting together of men of 
letters which became an authority in hterature. The 
Academy, as an academy, remained really what it was 
intended to be — a body appointed "to cleanse the 
language," and to defend it against the corruption 
which might be introduced into it by the vicissitudes 
of fashion at Court, the barbarism of the formalities 
of the palace, and the slang of the various pro- 
fessions/ If, when reducing the language to words 
commonly used and generally approved, the Academy 
sometimes showed excessive severity — if we are 
implicitly to believe in that scene in the comedy of 
the "Academicians," in which Mile, de Gournay 
is represented as pleading ineffectually with the 
Academy on behalf of the word migoisse,'^ which custom 
has retained — this circumstance would teach us at 
the same time, that custom has frequently gained the 
victory. If it was decided that the Dictionary of 
the Academy should contain all the words in the 
language, the result of this decision was that the 
language, by extending its vocabulary, enlarged the 
Dictionary. Words that had become necessary, or 
that were of felicitous invention, soon obtained a place 
for themselves therein ; and, even before obtaining a 
place, Corneille's invaincu passed into poetry, where 

' Pelisson, " Histoh'e de I'Academie," p. 40. 
2 " Otez moult etjafoit bien que mal a propos, 

Mais laissez pour le raoins blandice, angoisse, et los." 

Saint- Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. i. 



112 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

no one ventured to condemn it.^ The true authority 
on these points, therefore, was that of our great 
masters, or rather of the general feehng which almost 
always approved them. It was as writers in pos- 
session of the means to secure a good reception from 
the public that the Academicians were the organs 
and sometimes the regulators of this feeling ; as 
Academicians they were only its archivists. 

The direct influence of the French Academy 
upon literature in general w^as, then, only feeble 
and limited ; it was the representative, rather than 
the guide of opinion. Doubtless men of letters, 
by aspiring to an honourable position among an 
illustrious body, as a reward for their labours, 
sometimes sacrificed, perhaps unwittingly, somewhat 
of that independence which their genius would have 
retained, had they lived in isolation and under the 
influence only of their natural impulses. Poetry 
especially, which derives its sustenance from solitary 
inspirations, may have lost a little of its free, original 
spirit in that frequent discussion of ideas, and that 
daily interchange of mind, which are more conducive 
to the progress of reason than to the flights of the 
imagination ; but this influence was especially power- 
ful over the minor poets, and though genius was not 
entirely free from its ascendancy, it was never either 

^ " Ton bras est mvaincu, mais non pas iuvincible." 

Corneille, " Le Cid." 



THE TIME OF COENEILLE. 113 

stifled or subjugated by it. Every writer, in par- 
ticular, may have been less free ; but literature, in 
general, was more so. 

Such was the direct and positive effect produced, 
upon the existence of men of letters, by the 
establishment of the Academy. The first moment 
of hesitation was short ; and general anxiety was 
soon manifested for admission into a company 
protected by the Prime Minister. The Chancellor 
Seguier, then Keeper of the Seals, did more than 
protect it when, in 1635, he requested to be 
received as a member ; and when, after the death 
of Richelieu, he became its protector, he solicited 
admission for his son.^ He frequently attended the 
meetings of the Academy, at which he enforced the 
most scrupulous equality, not even suffering those 
Academicians who belonged to his household to 
call him Monseigneur. These little incidents, and 
many others of a similar character, soon made the 
title of Academician a distinct and honourable title, 
which, when the King became protector of the Aca- 
demy, was not thought beneath the ambition of any 
man at Court. The two classes were thus brought 
into closer connection than they had ever been before, 
but their respective position had changed ; the man 
of letters, certain of a good reception in society, could 

1 The Marquis de Coislin, who was received in 1652. Pi'evious to the 
admission of the Keeper of the Seals, M. de Servien, a Secretary of State, 
had been admitted, in 1634. 



] 14 POETRY IN FRANCE BEFORE 

now bestow upon the man of fashion a distinction 
all the more precious because, during more than a 
century and a half, the literary class, so fertile in 
distinguished talents of different orders, had left 
very little space for a display of the less academical 
talents of the men of the world. In proportion as, 
during the reign of Louis XIV., court distinctions 
became less honourable, distinctions of mind were 
more sought after, and these it was in the power 
of men of letters to bestow. At the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, they had been obliged to 
waste their talents in pandering to the frivolous 
pastimes of society : when the eighteenth century 
arrived, society was desirous to understand those 
serious ideas which formed the subject of their 
meditations. This revolution in manners was 
destined soon to become an intellectual revolution, 
and finally to operate a political revolution, and 
to change the face of the world, after having at 
fiirst changed only the social relations of men of 
letters to men of the world. But I pause before 
the immense horizon and the fathomless abyss 
which simultaneously open before me. I merely 
intended to seek out the principal causes, and to 
sketch the original characteristics, of the state of 
literature, and especially of poetry, in France, at the 
commencement of the seventeenth century, during 
the period of preparation for the advent of Corneille. 



THE TIME OP CORNEILLE. 115 

I have hitherto said nothing about the fixed 
estabHshment of theatres, and the impulse which 
directed the taste of France towards dramatic 
literature. To Corneille belongs the primal glory of 
that literature : and with his life must be connected 
the history of its earliest efforts. 



I 2 



I 



PIEREE COENEILLE. 

(1606-1684.) 

The progress of dramatic art is not necessarily 
commensurate with that made by other branches of 
literature. In regard to those kinds of poetry which 
depend for their effect upon the talent of the poet 
himself, in order that the influence of this talent may 
be properly developed, it is necessary that the taste 
of the public should be sufiiciently cultivated to feel 
and admire it. The external and material means at 
the disposal of the dramatic author give much greater 
extension to his audience ; unless his self-love be very 
delicate, he will have slight difiiculty in satisfying 
himself with the noisy applause of the multitude : 
indeed, according to all appearance, it was for the 
multitude that the first essays of dramatic art were 
everywhere intended. It was for men who were 
unsatisfied with merely mental gratifications that was 
first invented a spectacle, adapted to strike the 
senses : — 

" Thespis fut le premier qui, barbouille de lie, 
Promena par les bourgs cette heureuse folie, 
Et, d'aeteurs mal ornes chargeant un tombereau, 
Amusa les passauts d'un spectacle nouveau." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 117 

Genius could not fail at once to appreciate and 
appropriate this happy invention. Poets who were 
accustomed to recite their verses in pubHc, easily 
perceived the advantage they would derive by the 
employment of dialogue, and by the material repre- 
sentation of the objects which they formerly used only 
to describe. Among our Troubadours, similar causes 
produced analogous effects. It appears certain that 
these earhest of modern poets had some idea of a kind 
of dramatic representation, or at least of a dialogised 
poetry, which was recited by actors who were either 
the poets themselves, or persons engaged by them. 
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we 
frequently meet with theatrical pieces, of a historical 
or satirical character, which were represented some- 
times by the orders, and at the expense, of the 
princes whose passions they flattered, ^ and sometimes 
even at the cost of the public, whom authors under- 
took, as at the present day, to amuse for money. ^ 
But the dramatic talents of those times, nurtured in 
Courts and amid the fantastic games of poetry, could 
not possibly understand either the taste of the people, 
or the proper character of an art which addresses 

1 Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, the protector of the Albigenses, com- 
manded the representation of a theatrical piece by Anselme Faydit against 
the Council of Lateran, entitled the " Heresy of the Fathers — VHeregia 
dels Peyres." 

2 This same Faydit, it is said, " not satisfied with the presents which 
nobles gave him for his works, erected a place suited to the perform- 
ance of comedies, aud received the money which the spectators gave him 
at the door." " Histoire du Theatre Fran9ais," vol. L p. 13. 



118 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

itself as much to the senses as to the mind. Sprung 
from a soil which was not suited to their develop- 
ment, they bore no lasting fruits ; and, " when the 
Maecenases failed,'^ says an old author, " the poets 
also fell away." 

The true origin of the theatre in France was 
popular. Every one know^s how the society of the 
Brethren of the Passion originated. Pilgrims from 
Jerusalem, from Saint James of Compostella, and 
from the Holy Balm, with their minds filled with 
thoughts of the places they had just visited, and their 
imaginations excited by devotion and leisure, com- 
posed songs, which necessity taught them to adorn 
with every accessory that was likely to attract atten- 
tion and obtain alms. To the pantomime with which 
they accompanied these songs they added the assist- 
ance of dialogue ; and, assembling in troops in public 
localities, clad in their copes, covered with images of 
the saints, and with their staves in their hands, they 
edified and amused the people. Whether we are 
indebted to them for the first idea of theatrical repre- 
sentations, or whether they had themselves borrowed 
it from those rude performances which were employed 
in the churches to rekindle the piety of the faithful on 
the days of great festivals, ^ this idea was thought so 
excellent that it was speedily made use of as a means 
of popular amusement, and formed a part of the 

^ Such as the Feast of Fools, the Feast of Asses, and so forth. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 119 

games by which the city of Paris was wont to 
solemnise great events. Charles VI., on his entrance, 
" beheld with pleasure what were then called 
mysteries ; that is to say, various theatrical represen- 
tations of entirely novel invention." On the entrance 
of Isabel of Bavaria, a number of young persons 
performed, upon different stages, " divers histories 
from the Old Testament."^ These pious spectacles 
speedily became popular in all the provinces of the 
realm, and in most of the kingdoms of Christendom ; 
and zeal or industry soon attempted to turn them to 
profit. It appears probable that the first representa- 
tions given at Saint Maur by the Brethren, ^ were not 
gratuitous ; at aU events it is certain that when the 
Provost of Paris forbade them to perform without the 
permission of the King, and obhged them to apply to 
Court for authorisation, the letters-patent which they 
obtained from Charles VL, in 1402, granted them 
permission to perform for profit. ^ 



^ •" Histoire de la Ville de Paris," vol. xiv. pp. 686, 707. 

' In 1398, they had hired a room at Saint Maur, in which they repre- 
sented the " Mysteries of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ." 

^ The patent runs thus : " On which fact and mystery the said Brother- 
hood has paid and expended much of its property, as have also the Brethren, 
each only proportionally ; saying, moreover, that if they played publicly 
and in common (that is, before the people), that it would be to the profit 
of the said Brotherhood, and that they could not do so rightly without our 
leave and license. * * We, who desire the benefit, profit, and use- 

fulness of the said Brotherhood, and that its rights and revenues should be 
by us increased and augmented by favours and privileges, in order that 
each one by devotion may and ought to join himself to their company, 
have given and granted," &c. 



120 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

Thus was instituted a theatrical performance 
according to the taste of the public, who, by paying 
for admission, obtained the right of expressing their 
opinion. For this, dramatic art was indebted to the 
Brethren of the Passion. But the public, as uncouth 
as the men who undertook to divert it, was not yet 
capable of training them ; the actors were deficient 
in emulation, and the spectators in comparison ; and 
at the end of a hundred and fifty years the last 
mysteries, though quite as ridiculous as the first, were 
distinguished only by less simplicity and good faith ; 
and the orders given to the Brethren, in 1548, to 
discontinue this kind of performance, proves that 
good taste and good sense had made progress, by 
which the mystery -mongers had not profited. 

At this period, there originated a new dramatic 
system, perfectly independent of that of the Brethren, 
and independent also of the taste of the public, for 
whose gratification it was not designed. This system 
was one of the first fruits of that erudite literature 
which, according to the usage of pedagogues in all 
ages, imposed silence upon its disciples before making 
any effort to correct their taste. Already several 
Greek tragedies, among others the "Electra" and 
the " Hecuba,'' had been translated into verse, but 
simply as specimens of a foreign drama, and without 
the slightest intention of enriching our own there- 
with. On the other hand, the events of the fabulous 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 121 

history of the Greeks had been represented upon our 
stage, but in the form pecuhar to it/ and without any 
imitation of the art of the ancients, from whom were 
borrowed merely subjects more rich in interest or 
more widely known than those that might have been 
supplied by our own history. Jodelle, the contem- 
porary and friend of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif 
and Pasquier — a man of small erudition himself, but 
whose mind was deeply impregnated with the atmos- 
phere of learning by which he was surrounded, was 
the first who conceived the idea of introducing, into 
French pieces of his owti composition, the dramatic 
forms of the ancients, or at least of Horace ; that 
is to say, the division into acts, the three unities, 
and the scrupulous exclusion from the stage of all 
machinery and hideous representations, especially of 
the devils, hell, and tortures of the damned and 
of martyrs, which constituted, perhaps, the most 
approved part of the Mysteries. Comedy depicted 
manners more elevated than those of the populace, 
tragedy was reserved for the adventures of Kings 
and Princes ; and the poetical coterie celebrated this 
invention with transports of delight. " Those who 

* We have the " Myst^re de la Destruction de Troyes la grant," in four 
days, which comprehend the whole period which elapsed from the judg- 
ment of Paris until the return of the Greeks after the capture of Troy. 
Paris is represented as oflfering a hundrtd cro^vn-pieces to the temple of 
Venus, and a note informs us that Troy was forty leagues in length and 
eight in breadth. The writer was probably ignorant of that passage in 
Homer in which Achilles chases Hector thi'ice round the walls of Troy. 



12£ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

at that time were judges of such matters/' sajs 
Pasquier, " declared that Ronsard was the first of 
poets, but that Jodelle was the dcemon of poetry 
himself^ The unimpassioned frigidity of these 
tragedies, which were composed almost entirely of 
narratives and monologues, w^as not distasteful to 
men w^hose minds were driven to the opposite 
extreme by their contempt for the performances of 
the Brethren ; and the indecency of the comedies 
could not revolt an age in which farces were still 
tolerated. 

These two kinds of dramatic composition, then, 
possessed in France at this period rules known and 
approved by the sovereign authorities in literature ; 
by the Court which, unskilful in creating pleasures 
for itself, willingly accepted those which were offered 
to it ; and by poets and learned men, by whom the 
new pieces were written, performed, and applauded. 
*' ' Cleopatra, ' a tragedy, by Jodelle, and ' La 
Rencontre,' a comedy, by the same author, were 
performed before King Henry at Paris, at the Hotel 
de Reims, with great applause from the whole 
company ; and afterwards again at the College de 
Boncourt, at which all the windows were crowded by 
an infinity of persons of honour. '''" '"' And the actors 
were all men of name, for even Remy Belleau and 
Jean de la Peruse played the principal parts." ^ 

^ " Pasquier," book vii. p. 705. ^ Ibid. p. 704. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 123 

Jodellej who was young and handsome, had under- 
taken the part of Cleopatra. 

This new form of dramatic art laid open to poets 
a career which they might well judge worthy of 
their talents ; the imitation or even translation of 
the Greek tragedies furnished them with numerous 
and fertile subjects. In truth, they strangely changed 
their nature in their imitations ; for they lived 'at a 
time which could not conceive of grandeur without 
emphasis, and when naturalness speedily degenerated 
into coarseness ; the dignity of supreme rank, the 
lofty character of the learned French spoken by the 
personages in their tragedies, did not always preserve 
them from the tone and manners of low life ; and the 
lovers of antiquity were not shocked at seeing 
Jodelle's Cleopatra, when Seleucus accuses her before 
Augustus of having concealed a portion of her 
treasures, seize Seleucus by the hair, and overwhelm 
him with blows and insults. 

More successful in comedy, which he based upon 
the manners of the time alone, and supported per- 
haps by some national models of true comicality, 
endemic in France, as is proved by the old farce of 
" Patelin," Jodelle was also more successfully imitated. 
Comedies devoid of character and probability, but 
not without intrigue and gaiety, presented some more 
natural productions of the French mind. Ere long 
Larivey introduced, with considerable success, upon 



124 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

our stage, some imitations of Latin and Italian come- 
dies ; and at the same time Garnier, the immediate 
successor of Jodelle, whose reputation he outshone, 
gave greater nobleness to the tone of tragedy. 
Without clothing it with an interest and verisimi- 
litude which the art of the poets of that period was 
not capable of reconciling with the restraint imposed 
by observance of the unities, he imparted to it greater 
decency, arrayed it in a more poetical style, and 
introduced a pathos of sentiment which was not what 
Ronsard and his partisans had sought to imitate from 
the ancients. 

This progress was still confined within the narrow 
sphere by which poets were then surrounded. 
The Brethren of the Passion, in possession of the 
exclusive privilege of offering to the public a 
performance for admission to which money was to be 
paid, but unable of themselves to turn this privilege 
to further advantage, since they had been forbidden 
to perform mysteries, leased the privilege and the 
Hotel de Bourgogne to a troop of comedians, whose 
aim was no longer to edify, but simply to amuse, the 
spectators. It was not with poetry in Ronsard's 
style, or with tragedies even more devoid of action 
than laden with erudition, that the spectators at the 
Hotel de Bourgogne were to be amused. Broad 
farces and moralities, the subjects of which were 
taken from recent and well-known occurrences — such 



PIEKRE CORNEILLE. 125 

as, for example, the execution of a valet at the Place 
de Greve for having seduced his master's wife (the 
valet being hanged upon the stage) — were what 
suited the taste of the frequenters of the Theatre des 
Confreres. The educated poets of the time do not 
appear to have ever entrusted their pieces to the 
comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne. They were 
performed either in the colleges or at the expense of 
some of the nobility ; most were merely made public 
by means of the press, and then any one who pleased 
might perform them. Garnier, in the preface to his 
" Bradamante,'' informs " those who may choose to 
perform it '^ that, as there are no choruses to the 
piece, the acts must be separated by means of 
interludes ; and we learn from the " Roman 
Comique '^ that the provincial actors used to play 
" Bradamante." 

Sometimes, when tragedies had been printed and 
published, the comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne 
endeavoured to turn them to account ; but it is 
certain that they did not meet with a favourable 
reception from spectators who were unable to compre- 
hend them. These performances, however, and their 
pubhcation, obtained for them a kind of popularity in 
the semi-literary world, which increased in numbers 
daily. This period was inundated by a host of 
tragedies divided into acts ; but it must be confessed 
that these acts, which were sometimes seven in 



126 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

number, ^ frequently include, in the same performance, 
as many years and countries as the old mysteries 
could have done. Fabulous and historical ideas are 
commingled therein in the strangest fashion. In 
1661, nine years after Jodelle's pieces had obtained 
such brilliant success, Jacques Grevin, in the preface 
to his dramatic works, complains of " the grievous 
faults that are daily committed in the games of the 
University of Paris, which ought to be a paragon of 
perfection in all knowledge, but where, nevertheless, 
they perpetrate, after the manner of tumblers, a 
massacre upon a scaffold, or utter a speech of two or 
three months' length/'^ The rules of Aristotle, 
which were violated as frequently as those of common 
sense, were as incapable of reforming the taste of the 
public as they were of satisfying it. 

One fact is especially deserving of remark at this 
period, and that is, the small number of comedies, as 
compared with the countless host of tragedies that 
were written. Perhaps the labour of invention which 
was indispensable in a kind of composition that, unlike 



^ As, for example, the " Cammate " of Jean Hays, king's advocate in the 
bailiwick of Rouen, published in 1597. 

2 In the " Soltane" of Gabriel Bounyn, published in 1560, the Sultana 
Rose, a witch, in order to destroy the son of her husband, the Sultan 
Solyman, proposes to call in the demons to her aid, among whom she 
enumerates Vulcan with his dragoons. In the " Aman " of Pierre Mathieu, 
Aman, whose pride drives him mad, boasts that he is the gim of the infernal 
troop. In the " Loyaute Trahie " of Jacques du Hamel, published in 1586, 
we meet with an Infanta of Astracan at the court of a King of Canada. 
These are but a few out of many thousands of similar instances. 



i 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 12 7 

tragedy, could not draw upon history for its subjects 
and materials, deterred literary men in general from 
devoting their talents to comedy. Thus much is 
certain that, in both kinds of dramatic composition, 
Jodelle, with his contemporaries and successors, 
contributed but very little to the improvement of our 
national drama, if we may give such a name to those 
crude performances with which the people of Paris 
and the provinces allowed themselves to be amused 
or bored for nearly two centuries. 

It was, nevertheless, from this rude cradle that, 
dating from the early years of the seventeenth 
century, dramatic art issued to make most rapid 
progress. Civil war had broken up old customs ; 
peace and happiness, restored by the triumph of 
Henry IV., demanded the institution of new ones ; 
and the pleasures which Paris could afford, no longer 
satisfied its inhabitants. The contempt into which 
the Brethren of the Passion had faUen, encouraged 
men to attack their privileges. Various troops of 
playwrights had already unsuccessfully attempted to 
do so ; but at length, in the year 1600, notwithstand- 
ing the opposition of the Brethren and the decrees of 
the Parliament, a new troop established itself in Paris, 
at the Hotel d' Argent, in the Marais, on condition of 
paying the privileged fraternity one crown-piece for 
every performance. The hopes of the new company 
were based upon an engagement which they had 



128 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

made with a man whose success is as astonishing to 
us as his talents were marvellous to his contempo- 
raries. Hardy, the founder of the Parisian stage, 
and the precursor of Corneille, was not one of those 
men whose genius changes or determines the taste of 
his age ; but he was the first man in France who 
conceived a just idea of the nature of dramatic poetr}^ 
He understood that a theatrical piece ought to have 
a higher aim than merely to satisfy the mind and 
reason of the spectators ; and he was at the same time 
of opinion, that carefulness to employ their senses and 
excite their imagination, should not prevent the play 
from being regulated by reason and probability. 
Hardy was not one of those erudite and happy poets 
who were content to limit their ambition to obtaining 
the suffrages of literary men and the applause of 
Courts. Though daily compelled to look to his 
talents to furnish him with the means of subsistence, 
he was not one of those mountebanks who are capable 
merely of amusing a populace in whose ignorance 
they participate. His education had not left him 
unacquainted with the literary acquirements of his 
time. His poverty had connected him with a troop 
of wandering comedians, who were more at liberty to 
exercise their profession in the provinces than in Paris, 
whence they were banished by the monopoly possessed 
by the Brethren. Thus early accustomed to stage 
plays, he endeavoured to apply to an important mode 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. VZ\) 

of action the rude means of interest which those plays 
could furnish. The step which he had to take, and 
which he really did take, can alone explain the 
success which he obtained. 

Those foreign critics^ who represent the French 
drama, subsequently to Jodelle, as trammelled by the 
general adherence of the public to the authority of 
Aristotle's rules, either have not read Hardy, or 
appreciate very imperfectly his importance in the 
history of the stage in France. Hardy was irregular 
enough to have been a Shakspeare, if he had pos- 
sessed a Shakspeare's genius. His first dramatic 
work with which we are acquainted contains the 
whole romance of '' Theagenes and Chariclea ;" ^ it 
is divided into eight days, one for each book of the 
romance, and is written in precisely the same form as 
the Mysteries. To say truth, this work met with an 
unfavourable reception from men of letters : " I know, 
reader,'' says Hardy himself, ^ " that my ' ^Ethiopic 
Story,' rendered monstrous by the faults that crept 
into the first impression, produced an unfavourable 
feeling with regard to my other works in the minds of 
certain imitators of Aristarchus." In order for this 
piece, when printed, to have been deemed worthy of 

^ Among others, M, Bouterwek, in his " History of French Literature," 
published at Gottingen, in 1809. 

2 " Les chastes et longues Amours de Thcag^ne et Chariclee," in eight 
consecutive dramatic or theatrical poems. 1600. 

•■' In his preface to " Didon se Sacrifiant." 



130 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

the attention of the critics, it must have obtained con- 
siderable success when performed. Perhaps, a larger 
amount of success would hare gained their appro- 
bation for the work. At all events, if we judge of 
what the critics required by what Hardy gave them, 
it is evident that a very strict adherence to rules 
was not expected of dramatic authors, and that 
Aristotle's authority was not so great on the stage 
as it was in the schools. 

After the production of the " Loves of Theagenes 
and Chariclea,'' Hardy abandoned the arrangement of 
his dramas into days, and divided his pieces into acts, 
giving them the more becoming name of tragedies 
and tragi-comedies.^ But he did not consider himself 
obliged, by the adoption of this new costume, to 
observe more rigid regularity. In the first act of his 
"Alcestis," he represents Hercules at the court of 
Eurystheus ; in the second, third, and fifth acts, the 
scene is laid at the court of Admetus ; and in the 
fourth, we are taken to the infernal regions, whither 
Hercules goes to fetch Alcestis, and whence, on the 
same occasion, he dehvers Theseus and carries off* 
Cerberus. In " Phraates, or the Triumph of True 
Lovers,^' the spectator travels from Thrace into 
Macedonia, and from Macedonia back again into 

^ He gives the name of a " dramatic poem," however, to his " Giganto- 
machia," a piece in which machineiy is introduced, to represent a combat of 
the gods with the giants. This piece is, nevertheless, divided into acts. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 131 

Thrace. The tragedy of " Pantheus '' extends over 
several days ; the first three acts of " Gesippus, or 
the Two Friends/' take place at Athens, and the last 
two at Rome, several years afterwards. Doubtless 
relying very little upon affording gratification to the 
spectators by means of a dialogue which, though 
sometimes rational, was always cold, laDguishing and 
unattractive, Hardy made up for the omission of this 
by the introduction of action, which he employed 
vrithout reserve. In " Scedasus, or HospitaHty 
Violated," two young girls who are ravished by 
their hosts, defend themselves upon the stage to the 
last moment, and probably end by retreating behind 
the scenes, though this is not indicated by any inter- 
ruption of the dialogue. Their ravishers afterwards 
put them to death upon the stage. In " Lucretia,'' 
who is certainly not Lucretia the chaste, a husband, 
the witness of his wife's infidehty, narrates to the 
spectator what is passing between the two lovers 
behind the scenes, and does not interrupt them 
until he has " seen with his own eyes " that which he 
requires to authorise him to put them both to death. 
Aristoclea, in the " Unfortunate Marriage," dies 
upon the stage, in consequence of the effort made 
by the servants of Straton, who is in love with her, 
to carry her off from the relatives of Callisthenes, her 
husband, who are naturally anxious to detain her. 
In these compositions, it is difficult to discern 

K 2 



132 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

what constitutes the difference between tragedy and 
tragi-comedy ; it certainly depends neither upon the 
nature of the subject, nor upon the rank of the 
personages. " Scedasus," all the personages of which 
are merely private individuals, is a tragedy, and 
certainly deserves this title from its denouement; but 
the frightful death of Aristoclea furnishes nothing 
more than a tragi-comedy. " Dido " is a tragedy ; 
but the dignity of the personages of " Alcestis,^' and 
the pathetic character of their position, do not raise 
it above the rank of a tragi-comedy. Two subjects, 
both equally tragic, derived from the Greek mytho- 
logy, furnish Hardy with the tragedy of " Meleager/' 
and the tragi-comedy of " Procris." The irregularity 
is the same in both kinds of composition ; and as 
regards tone, that of Hardy, in general not very 
lofty, scarcely allows us to perceive the shades of that 
more familiar naturalness which he appears to have 
wished to introduce into some scenes of his tragi- 
comedies. In " Procris," for example, Tito complains 
to his confidant in very light terms of the infidelity 
of his wife, and Aurora banters Cephalus with con- 
siderable freedom of speech ; and in " Alcestis,'^ the 
father and mother of Admetus, after having expressed 
their grief that they cannot ransom their son's life by 
the sacrifice of their own, change their mind when 
informed by the oracle that it is in their power to 
save him by an act of self-devotion, and unite in 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 133 

declaring that they would rather live the whole time 
allotted to them by the Fates. 

Hardy, then, was neither the successor of Jodelle 
and Garnier, nor the imitator of the Greeks, but a 
national dramatic poet, as far as it was possible to be 
such in a literature in which recollections of the 
ancients occupied so prominent a position. Hardy 
was not guided by their precepts, although he some- 
times profited by their example ; he frequently 
borrowed from them subjects for his dramas, but did 
not imitate their treatment of them ; he omitted 
from their rules whatever he thought unsuited to the 
stage and the prevailing taste of his time ; and, while 
he adopted the arrangement of their tragedies, he 
did away with the choruses, as being " superfluous to 
the performance, and too troublesome to recast." 
He remodelled, according to his own manner, the 
subjects which he adopted. Too sensible, and too 
unversed in the ways of the world, to dress up, as 
was done at a later period, Greek and Roman 
characters in the costume of the day, he was, never- 
theless, careful to strip them of that antique and 
local colouring which would greatly have astounded 
an entirely French audience. It was in French, 
moreover, although in bad French, that Hardy 
addressed the public. The faults of his style are 
neither the erudite obscurity, nor the contorted 
phraseology, nor the studied neologism of Ronsard ; 



I 



134 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

he is characterised by the harshness, incorrectness, 
impropriety and triviahty of a man whom the neces- 
sity of providing for his own subsistence and for that 
of a troop of comedians, sometimes compelled to 
furnish two thousand hues in twenty-four hours. 
Hardy's talent knew no other shackles but those of 
poverty ; fecundity was all that was expected from 
him, and liever was a duty better fulfilled. Six 
hundred dramatic: pieces,^ all in verse, and some of 
which were composed, learned, and performed within 
three days,^ served by their number, as much as by 
their merit, to establish Hardy's reputation, and a 
taste for dramatic works, in France. Like Hardy, 
Lope de Vega composed a play in twenty-four hours ; 
and both these men were the founders of the drama 
of their respective nations. Variety is the merit 
most necessary to ensure the primary success of an 
art which requires a crowd to witness its eflforts : 
before having formed that taste or habit which 

^ Some say eight hundred ; only forty-one are now extant, including 
the eight dramatic poems which relate the " Loves of Theagenes and 
Chariclea." See Gueret, " Guerre des Auteurs," p. 161. 

2 It appears that the price of these was three crowns apiece. Made- 
moiselle Beaupre, the actress, who performed in the dramas of both Hardy 
and Corneille, used to say : " M. Corneille has done us great injury ; for- 
merly we used to have dramas at three crowns each, which were wi'itten 
for us in a night ; people were used to them, and we gained a great deal by 
them ; now, Corneille's pieces cost us a great deal, and gain us very little." 
" It is true," adds Segrais, who relates this remark, " that these old pieces 
were wretchedly bad ; but the actors were excellent, and gained applause for 
them by their admu*able performance." (" Segraisiana," p. 214.) Hardy 
was, it is said, the first man who received money for his pieces. Pre- 
viously, the actors used to take such as they found in print, or else wrote 
dramas for themselves. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 135 

enlists the attention of spectators, movement must be 
supplied to attract them, and curiosity alone is able 
to produce this movement ; but this curiosity must 
be continually renewed, and must incessantly recall 
the mind, by the expectation of novelty, towards 
pleasures which habit has not yet transformed into 
necessities. Neither the relative decency which 
Hardy infused into the tone of his characters, nor a 
certain measure of reason and probability which he 
endeavoured to introduce into his plans, nor the 
movement which he invariably imparted to his action, 
nor even the machinery with which he sometimes 
adorned his plays, would long have reconciled the 
spectators to pieces in which they found nothing 
either to satisfy a discriminating taste, or to awaken 
profound emotion. If, however. Hardy had employed 
the same time in perfecting his plays which he did 
in varying their subjects, some few men of taste 
might possibly have applauded his intentions, but 
the multitude would certainly have withdrawn their 
patronage. Cinthio, an actor belonging to an ItaHan 
troop, answered the Earl of Bristol, who found fault 
with him for the want of probability of the pieces 
which he performed : " If there were more of it, good 
actors would die of hunger with good comedies.^' 
And when actors die of hunger, they leave no 
successors, and dramatic authors, in consequence, 
come to an end. 



1^6 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

Hardy's performers did not starve ; and this was 
then the greatest service that he could have rendered 
to his art. Frequently, a thin attendance of spec- 
tators obliged the two troops to unite, and limit their 
exertions to a single performance at the Hotel de 
Bourgogne, the actors belonging to which obtained, 
in 1612, the title of the " King's Comedians," and a 
pension of twelve hundred livres ; but ever after the 
year 1600, there was always at least one troop of 
actors at Paris, and Hardy's dramas long constituted 
their principal stock in trade. The moment had 
arrived when poets only required the establishment 
of a regular theatre to induce them to write for it. 
Hardy had rendered the stage more decent, and more 
worthy of their efforts. The taste which the public 
was beginning to feel for mental enjoyments found 
only weak and chilling nutriment in the precise and 
formal verses of Malherbe's school. The stage sum- 
moned to its aid all those men whom a more lively 
imagination, a more unfettered genius, and a more 
active character, urged upon a more animated career 
and to more boisterous success. Theophile, a poet 
very deficient in taste though not wanting in talent, 
thus addresses Hardy : — 

" Jamais ta veine ne s'amuse 
A couler un sonnet mignard ; 
Detestant la pointe et le fard 
Qui rompt les forces a la muse. 



PIERRE CORIs^ElLLE. l**^? 

Je marque entre les beaux esprits, 
Malherbe, Bertaut, et Porcheres, 
Dont les louanges me sont cheres, 
Com^m^e j 'adore leurs ecrits. 
Mais a I'air de tes tragedies 
On verroit faillir leur poumon, 
Et comme glaces du Strymon 
Seroient leui-s veines refroidies." 

Theophile gave to the stage his " Thisbe," in which 
we sometimes meet with a poetic elegance of which 
Hardy never had any idea, mingled with the ridiculous 
concetti of the time. Racan, whose imagination 
Malherbe admired, and whose negligence he blamed,^ 
introduced into his " Bergeries " still greater elegance 
and purity. The names of Mairet and Rotrou became 
known by their dramatic works alone ; and Scudery 
and La Calprenede devoted themselves to the stage 
with heart and soul. " After Theophile had 
performed his ' Thisbe,' and Mairet his ' Sylvie,' 
M. de Racan his ' Bergeries,' and M. de Gombaud his 
' Amaranthe,' the stage became more celebrated, and 
many persons endeavoured to give it new support. 
The poets no longer made any difficulty about allowing 
their names to appear on the bills of the actors ; for 
formerly, no author's name had been given, but it 
was simply stated that their author had written for 
them a comedy of a certain name." ^ The dramatic 
poet was no longer the author of the actors, but of 

' Malherbe uyed to say of Racan "that he had power, but that be did 
not labour enough at his verses." PeUsson, " Histoire de I'Academie.'' p. 47. 
2 Sorci, " Bibliotheque Fran9aise," p. 185. 



138 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

the public ; the dramatic art became in literature one 
of the most brilliant means of achieving success, and 
the taste which Cardinal Eichelieu felt for this kind 
of amusement soon made it one of the surest means 
of obtaining favour. French poetry was evidently 
turning in the direction of dramatic composition ; but 
there was nothing as yet to announce the impulse it 
was about to receive from Corneille. It is easy to 
conceive what must have been the condition of a 
drama abandoned to the caprices of an imagination 
that sought only to deliver itself from the yoke of the 
rules imposed upon other kinds of poetry, — of a drama 
satisfied with the applause of a public that desired 
nothing but novelty, — subject to the whims of fashion, 
and to the ambition of all those poets who were led, 
by beholding a new career, to beheve that they 
possessed a new order of talent. Mairet presented 
himself on the stage at sixteen, and Rotrou at 
eighteen years of age. Scudery wrote in Gascon, ^ and 
boasted of his ignorance : — " In the music of the 
sciences,'' he says, " I sing only by nature. ''^ ''^ I 
have spent more years in the camp than hours in my 
study, and used more matches to fire arquebuses than 
to light candles ; so that I can arrange soldiers better 
than words, and square battalions better than I can 
round periods."^ The stage was just suited to 

1 Some say it was Norman. Scudery was of Provencal origin, but was 
born at Havre, where his father was married. 

2 Preface to " Lygdamon." 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 189 

Scud^ry's poetical impertinence : in dramatic litera- 
ture it was thought allowable to dispense with 
carefulness, and even correctness of style ; an author 
might mingle at his pleasure the finical with the 
bombastic, or the thoughtful with the trivial ; and 
extravagance of language was surpassed only by 
eccentricity of ideas. Movement, which had been 
almost entirely banished from other kinds of poetry, 
seemed to be the only merit required on the stage ; 
and this movement, which never was allowed to 
originate in the passions of the soul, was kept up by 
an accumulation of romantic adventures : abductions, 
combats, disguises, recognitions, infidelities, — nothing 
was spared to give animation to the scene, and to 
prevent the spectator from noticing the dulness and 
truthlessness of those insipid romances, which were 
almost invariably brought on the stage under 
the convenient title of tragi-comedies ; the tragic 
element in which was distinguished only by a more 
singular mixture of triviality and bombast — the 
comic, by a stranger disregard for propriety — and 
the pastoral, by a more monstrous employment of all 
available means. 

Amidst this confusion, what became of the rules of 
Aristotle, and the recollections of the Greeks and 
Romans 1 The unities — observed by chance, or 
violated without scruple, prescribed by a few men of 
letters, and contemned by most others — furnished 



140 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

only a subject of discussion, and were regarded with 
utter indifference by those who should have paid 
most attention to them. The simplicity of ancient or 
historical subjects was thought too naked, and they 
had been superseded by subjects of pure imagination, 
in which there was nothing to trammel the eccentricity 
of the author's conceptions, and by innumerable 
imitations of the Spanish and Italian dramas, whither 
some men. of taste advised the poets to repair in 
order to obtain some idea of the regularity necessary 
to the dramatic poem/ The less-refined pubhc gave 
full permission to those who undertook to cater for 
their amusement to select whatever means they chose 
to employ ; their ignorant favour was within the 
reach of all who took a little trouble to win it ; talent 
might succeed in gaining it, and mediocrity might lay 
claim to it ; no path had been definitely marked out, 
but all were equally open, when Corneille appeared. 

Pierre Corneille, born at Rouen on the 6th of June, 
1606, of a family distinguished for magisterial 
services, ^ was intended for the bar, and was brought 

1 Mairet having been requested by Cardinal de la Valette to compose a 
pastoral in the form and taste of the Italian school, was led by study of the 
Italian dramatists to perceive the necessity of observing the unities, which 
he had not thought it necessary to do so long as he considered them incul- 
cated only by the example of the ancients. He composed his " Sylvanire " 
in 1625, in conformity with the unities ; but did not always obsei-ve them 
afterwards. 

2 His father was royal advocate at the marble table of Normandy, and 
special master of the waters and forests in the viscounty of Rouen ; his 
mother, Marthe le Pesant de Boisguilbert, was the daughter of a Maitre des 
Comptes. In the Appendix to this " Life of Corneille " will be found some 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 141 

up to the severe studies of that learned profession. ^ 
He felt his genius, however, early incline towards 
occupations more in unison with that career upon 
which he was urged by a vocation so well authenti- 
cated by the whole course of his life. Love dictated 
his first verses, and to love has he ascribed the glory 
which he achieved as a poet : — 

" Charme de deux beaux yeux, mon vers charma la com-, 
Et ce que j'ai de mieux, je le dois a I'amour." ^ 

It will, nevertheless, be difficult to believe that love 
was the principal source of Corneille's genius ; and, in 
order to become convinced that he was but slightly 
indebted to this sentiment for his inspiration, we need 
only read what he says elsewhere of his first love : — 

" Soleils, flambeaux, attraits, appas, 
Pleurs, desespoirs, tourments, trepas, 
Tout ce petit meuble de boucbe 
Dont un amoui-eux s'escarmouche, 
Je savais bien m'en escrimer ; 
Par la je m'appris k rimer." 



interesting and novel details regarding his father, and the letters of 
nobility conferred upon him by Louis XIII. I am indebted for these 
documents to the kindness of M. Floquet, than whom no one is better 
acquainted with the political and Hterary history of Normandy. See 
Appendix A. 

1 He pursued his studies at the Jesuits' College at Rouen, and gained a 
prize either in 1618 or 1619. "I have seen," writes M. Floquet, "in the 
valuable library of the late M. Villenave, the volume which was then given 
to Pierre Corneille r it is a folio volume, and on the sides of the book are 
embossed in gold the arms of Alphonse d'Omano, lieutenant-general and 
governor of Normandy at this period, who, in that capacity, had paid the 
expense of the prizes distributed at the College. A notice of some length, 
signed by the principal, indicates the number of the class, and the reason 
why this reward was given to young Corneille." 
2 " Excuse h, Ariste," &c. 



]42 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Love taught hira merely to rhyme, and to string 
rhymes together was a very small matter for Corneille. 
But, if we are to believe Fontenelle, love taught him 
something more than this : " Hardy was beginning 
to grow old, and his death would have made a great 
breach in the drama, when a slight event which 
occurred in a respectable family in a provincial town, 
gave him an illustrious successor. A young man 
took one of his friends to see a girl with whom he 
was in love ; the new-comer established himself upon 
the downfall of his introducer ; the pleasure which 
this adventure occasioned him made him a poet ; he 
wrote a comedy about it — and behold the great 
Corneille ! " ^ 

1 Fontenelle, "Histoire du Theatre Frangais," pp. 78, 79. Such is, in 
reality", the subject of " Melite," his first piece. This anecdote, however, 
seems to be contradicted by a note to the " Excuse a Ariste," in which we 
are informed that the "beautiful eyes" which so charmed Corneille 
belonged to Mme. de Pont, the wife of a Maitre des Comptes at Rouen, 
" whom he had known as quite a little gM, whilst he was studying in the 
Jesuit College at Rouen." 

" Elle eut mes premiers vers, elle eut mes premiers feux," 

says Corneille ; and he repeats, in several passages of the same piece, that 
this love " taught him to rhyme," and that the taste of his mistress for 
poetry, 

" Le fit devenir poete aussitot qu' amoureux." 

Soon after he adds : — 

" Je ne vois rien d'aimable apr^s I'avoir aimee ; 
Aussi n'aimai-je plus, et nul objet vainqueur 
N'a possede depuis ma veine ni mon coeur." 

These lines were written in 1635 or 1636 ; therefore the object of that 
sole passion which occupied the first ten or eleven years of Corneille's life, 
and inspired the earliest efibrts of his Muse, was of necessity his M^lite, 
if M^lite ever existed. But how can we reconcile this early liaison between 
Corneille when a student, and Mme. de Pont "n^ heu quite a little girl, with 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 143 

Such, at least, was the starting-point of the great 
Corneille ; but it contains no presage of his future 
glory. If, in his earhest works, we discover some 

the manner in wliich Fontenelle introduces Corneille to M^lite, as a full- 
grown lawyer ? (See Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille/' p. 81, in the third 
volume of his Works.) It is equally difficult to hai-monise with these 
various circumstances the date of the year 1625, which is indicated by 
Fontenelle as the period at which "Melite" was performed. Corneille, 
who was born in 1606, would then have been only nineteen years old, and 
could hardly have completed his studies ; and it is difficult to believe that, 
before composing his piece, he had, as Fontenelle assures us, already 
appeared at the bar, although " without success." Other works place the 
date in 1629, Fontenelle, who wrote seventy years afterwards (about 1700), 
and who was born fifty years after his uncle (in 1656), may only have 
found confused and doubtful traditions of his great relative in a family 
by whom literary anecdotes of Corneille's life were probably considered 
less interesting than they were aftei"wards thought to be by a nephew who 
had grown rich by his fame. Those for whom they would have possessed 
the deepest interest, Thomas Corneille and Mme. de Fontenelle, a woman, 
it is said, of considerable talent, were born long after their elder brother 
(Thomas was bom in 1625), and coiild have had no personal knowledge of 
the matter. I shall have occasion in the com'se of this sketch to correct 
several manifest errors of Fontenelle with regard to the facts of his 
uncle's life. 

M. Taschereau, in his " Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Corneille," 
(Paris, 1829), has also called in question the anecdote related by Fontenelle ; 
and in a paper read by M. E. Gaillard before the Academy of Rouen, in 
1834, which contains some curious biogi*aphical notices of Corneille, I find 
the following passage : " M. Taschereau has fallen into error regarding 
M^lite, whom he treats as an imaginary being. If he had read the 
' Mor^ri des Normands,' a manuscript in the Library at Caen, he would 
have seen that Melite is the anagram of Milet ; and Abb^ Guyot, formerly 
Secretary of the Puy de la Conception, at Rouen, affirms that Mile. Milet 
was a very pretty young lady of our town. I may add that she lived at 
Rouen, in the Rue aux Juifs, No. 15. This fact was attested to me by 
M. Dommey, formerly Chief Clerk at the Chambre des Comptes, a man who, 
if alive, would now be 120 years old, and who told me that he had this 
infoi-mation from some very old ladies who used to live in that house, in 
the Rue aux Juifs, when he was a very young man. The existence of 
Mile. Milet is, moreover, a tradition at Rouen. In my youth I have heard 
it related to octogenarians of the highest rank, one of whom, the Chevalier 
de Maisons, was the friend of M. de Cideville." " Precis Analytique des 
Travaux de I'Acad^mie de Rouen pendant Tannic 1834," pp. 165, 166. 



144 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

traces of an original mind, it is not the originality of 
genius, but merely of good sense beginning to discern 
the absurdity of that which it condescended to imitate. 
The models set up for Corneille's imitation were 
adapted neither to direct, nor to fetter him. " I had 
no guide,'^ he says, in his examination of ' Melite,' 
" but a little common sense, together with the 
examples of the late M. Hardy, ^ and of a few 
moderns who were then beginning to appear, but who 
were not more regular than he was." Consequently, to 
use his own expression, " ' Melite ' was not written in 
conformity to the rules ; for," he adds, " I was not 
then aware that there were any rules." It was of 
little consequence for him to know them ; to learn 
how to confine within twenty-four hours an intrigue 
which Corneille has extended over a month, was 
then a progress of little importance to an art in 
which everything still remained to be created, and 
which it was necessary to furnish with well-selected 
subjects, and true and passionate feelings, before 
thinking of laying a foundation, in the void, for forms 
as yet of no utility. 

Reason, however, had indicated some of these 
forms to Corneille. " That common sense," he says, 
" which was my only rule, taught me the use of unity 
of action to set four lovers at variance by a single 

^ Hardy was dead when Corneille wrote his examinations; but he was 
alive when " Melite " was performed, and did not die until two or three 
years afterwards. 



PIEERE COENEILLE. 145 

intrigue, and gave me sufficient aversion for that 
horrible irregularity which brought Paris, Rome, and 
Constantinople upon the same stage, to make me 
reduce mine to a single town." ^ But here the art 
of young Corneille comes to an end ; here ceases his 
contribution to truth of representation and probability 
of action. Erastus, enraged against Tircis for having 
supplanted him in the favour of his mistress, writes 
love-letters, in the name of that mistress, to Philander, 
who is in love with the sister of Tircis. Philander's 
vanity does not allow him either to doubt his good 
fortune, or to resist it, or to conceal it ; and this is 
the intrigue which sets the four lovers at variance, 
without either of them attempting to obtain from each 
other the slightest explanation. Tircis and Melite, the 
hero and heroine of the piece, are ready to die of grief, 
without inquiring its cause. Erastus believes they 
are dead, is seized with remorse, and becomes mad. 
In his madness he imagines that he is descending to 
Tartarus to rescue them, and expresses his determi- 
nation, if Pluto will not give them up, to carry off 
Proserpine. He jumps upon the shoulders of a 
neighbour, whom he takes for Charon, and belabours 
him unmercifully, in order to force him to give him a 
passage in his boat. He afterwards meets Philander, 
whom he takes for Minos, and confesses to him the 
trick of which he had been guilty. This was the 

^ Examination of " Mdlite." 



146 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

kind of comedy which Corneille, " though condemn- 
ing it in his heart/' ^ employed as "a theatrical 
ornament which never failed to please, and frequently 
gained admiration/' ^ Mehte, to whom Tircis speaks 
of the love which she inspires, replies : — 

** Je ne regois d'amour et n'en donne d personne : 
Le moyen de donner ce que je n'eus jamais ?" 

Instead of love, she is willing " to lend to Erastus the 
coldness " of her soul ; but coldness melts away when 
she is present : — 

" Et vous n'en conservez que faute de vous voir !" 

Erastus gallantly replies ; to which Melite, who is 
determined to have the last word, immediately 
answers — 

" Eh qiioi ! tous les miroirs ont-ils de fausses glaces ?" 

Such was " the natural style which truly depicted 
the conversation of respectable persons '' ; ^ by such 
means comedy, for the first time, obtained the honour 
of exciting laughter " without the introduction of 
ridiculous personages, such as jesters, valets, captains 
and doctors, but simply by the sportive humour 
of persons superior in rank to those represented in 
the comedies of Plautus and Terence." ^ As regards 
the characters, Tircis might be substituted for 
Erastus, and Erastus for Tircis, without any 

1 Examination of " Mdlite." - Ibid. ^ ibjd. ^ ibjd. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 147 

perceptible difference. A gay, but rather cowardly 
lover, who is introduced in order to show off the 
hero of the piece, and a merry and careless girl, 
who is placed in contrast to the sensible Melite, are 
the most sahent characteristics of this comedy ; but 
its style, "being unexampled in any language,'' and its 
originality and merit, compelling the approbation of 
the public, who had at first paid little attention to 
the work of an unknown poet, ^ obtained such success 
and drew such crowds that the two troops of come- 
dians, then united at the Hotel de Bourgogne, 
separated once more. The troop of the Marais, 
resting the most brilliant hopes upon the new author 
who had made his appearance with so much dis- 
tinction, resumed their former habitation ; ^ and old 
Hardy, who continued connected with the troop 
which his labours had supported, frequently had 

^ " The first three performances together were not so well attended aa 
the least of those which took place during the same winter." — Corneille, 
" Epitre d(5dicatoire de Melite." 

2 See the " Histoire de la Ville de Paris," book xxix. As nearly as we 
can gather from the confused details which have reached us regarding the 
theatres of this period, it would appear that the comedians of the Hotel de 
Bourgogne, faithful to their inheritance of the Confreres and the Enfants de 
Sans-Soucy, habitually performed farces, and that the actors of the Theatre 
du MaraLs devoted themselves more especially to comedy and tragedy. 
Mondory, the most celebrated tragic actor of those times, was leader of the 
troop at the Marais. The taste of the regular spectators, howevei', by 
banishing farces, placed both troops at last upon the same footing. The 
comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne were frequently recruited by actors 
from the troop of the Marais, who were transferred therefrom by order of 
the government, probably at their own request. Notwithstanding these 
losses, the Marais troop maintained its position until 1673, when it was 
united to that of the Palais Royal, a third troop which had been formed 
imder the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu. 

L 2 



148 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

occasion to acknowledge, at all events when the 
profits were divided, the superior merits of his young 
rival.^ 

How, then, are we to account for the astonishing 
success obtained by Corneille's first work 1 Its merits 
were, a superiority of art and intrigue equalled by 
none of his contemporaries ; a wisdom of reason 
commensurate with its affluence of wit; and last, 
though not least, the novelty of a first glimmering of 
taste, of a first effort towards truthfulness. Its style, 
which appears to us so very unnatural, was, never- 
theless, as Corneille informs us, the language of 
gallantry and the common conversation of polite 
society. The dialogue in " Mehte " could not but 
appear simple and natural in comparison with that in 
" Sylvie,'' ^ " which was so much recited,'' says 
Fontenelle, " by our fathers and mothers in their 
pinafore days,''^ and which is entirely composed of 
forty or fifty distichs of this kind : — 

PHILEMON. 

" Arrete, mon soleil : quoi ! ma longue poursmte 
ISTe pourra m'obtenir le bien de te parler ? 

STLVIE. 

C'est en vain que tu veux interrompre ma fiiite ; 
Si je suis un soleil, je dois toujours aller. 



1 It would appear that, besides his three crowns for every piece, his 

contract secured him a share in the profits of the theatre. On receiving his 

share of the profits of the performance of '' M^lite," he used to say, " It's 

a good farce," perhaps to indicate that he allowed it no higher merit. 

- A Pastoral, by Mairet. 

3 Fontenelle, " Histoire du Theatre Frangais," p. 80. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 149 

PHILEMON. 

Tu peux bien pour le moins, avant ma sdpultui'e, 
D'un baiser seulement ma douleur apaiser. 

SYLVIE. 

Sans perdre en meme temps I'une ou I'autre nature, 
Les glaces et les feux ne sauraient se baiser. 

PHILEMON. 

Oh coeur ! mais bien rocher, toujom's convert d'orages, 
Oil mon ame se perd avec trop de rigueur ! 

SYLVIE. 

On touche le rocher ou Ton fait le naufrage ; 
Mais jamais ton amour ne m'a touche le cceur." 

Howeyer careful Corneille may have been to 
conform to this deplorable kind of wit, a corrector 
reason displayed itself continually, and, as it were, in 
spite of his efforts, in his work. In the style of 
" Mehte," also, might be perceived a kind of boldness 
necessarily unknown to those authors who were so 
proud of the haste and negligence with which they 
composed their dramatic works. No one had as yet 
introduced that tone of moderate elevation which 
maintains the characters of a play in the same 
position throughout, and is equally removed from 
vulgarity and ridiculous pomp. ^ At length, excepting 

^ The use of the second person singular which so much shocked Voltaire 
and which is frequent in all Comeille's early comedies, was probably at 
that time not an impropriety, and was less an indication of the intimacy of 
two lovers, than of a sort of familiarity which was allowable with persons 
with regard to whom it was not thought necessaiy strictly to observe 
forms. It is thus \ised more frequently by women than by men, and 
appears to be one of the signs of that superiority which a woman aasumes 
over a lover of whose affection she is sure. In " Cinna," Emilie addresses 
Cinna in the second person singular, but he does not use it in his answers. 
In "La Veuve," one of Comeille's earliest comedies, Clarice thees-and-thous 
Philiste, who, far from thinking he has any claim upon her, has not even 



150 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

only in his fantastic description of the pagan madness 
of Erastus/ Corneille had attained, if not to real and 
complete truth, at least to a kind of relative truth- 
fulness, on which no previous writer had bestowed a 
thought. Instead of figures naturally full of life and 
animation, he sought as yet merely to represent the 
artificial figures of contemporary society ; but he had 
felt the necessity of taking some model, and while 
the authors of his day were as incapable of imitation 
as of invention, he had at least striven to copy some 
characteristics of the world beneath his eyes. 

Of these merits, most of which were negative and 
the only ones by which we can explain Corneille's 
first success, some were revealed to him by criticism. 
Having come to Paris "to witness the success of 

ventured to confess his love, and maintains the deepest respect in his 
language towards her. He informs us that she is of higher rank than 
himself, and this is probably the cause of her familiarity. In the same 
piece, Chrysanthe, an old woman, says thee and thou to Gdron, a kind of 
business man, who never addresses her otherwise than as you. In other 
places, we find instances of old ladies speaking in this manner to their 
servants. Fontenelle blames the theeing-and-thouing in Corneille's pieces 
only on account of its impoliteness. See his " Vie de Corneille," p. 93. 

1 In all the comedies of -the time we find the same use of the language 
of Paganism by thoroughly modern personages. Thus, in the comedy of 
the " Thuilleries," a pi'oduction of the ''five authors," the intrigue of 
which actually takes place in the garden of the Tuileries, the lovers tell us 
that they met in the temple, whither they had gone to adore the Qods ; and 
Aglante relates that a hermit whom he had consulted as to whether it was 
allowable to marry without love, spoke to him of love as the Master of the 
Gods, and threatened him with their anger if he dared to approach his 
altar with irreverence. At the same time his uncle, who is vexed by this 
decision, ironically calls the hermit " this venerable father," and laughs at 
his nephew because he can — 

" Au retour d'ltalie, etre encor scrupuleux." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 151 

'Melite/" he learned "that its action was not 
included within twenty-four hours ; and this/^ he 
says, " was the only rule known at that period " ; ^ 
although authors attached Httle or no importance to 
it. The charge of irregularity, however, was not 
sufficient to console them for the success of " Melite "; 
they blamed it for its deficiency of events, and for its 
excessively natural style. " I learned,^' says Corneille 
himself, " that those of the craft found fault with it 
because it contained few effects, and because its style 
was too famihar.'^ Fortunately for taste, Corneille 
had already entered the lists on its behalf Self- 
respect came to the aid of reason. His firmness in 
the defence of truth rested complacently upon the 
success of his work. " To justify myself," he says, 
" by a sort of bravado, and to show that this kind of 
drama possessed the same theatrical beauties, I 
undertook to compose one regular piece, that is to 
say, extending over twenty-four hours only, full of 
incidents, and written in a loftier style, but which 
should be worth absolutely nothing, — in which I 
completely succeeded.'^ 

If Corneille's sole object in the composition of 
" Clitandre " really was to render the triumph of 
good taste more illustrious by a display of bad taste, 
never did an author sacrifice himself more entirely for 
the pubhc good. A party of two couples, meeting by 

^ Examination of " Clitandre." 



15^ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

chance at the same time and place, in consequence 
of a double project of assassination ; the frustration 
of these projects by each other ; a man who attempts 
to violate a girl upon the stage, and the girl who 
defends herself by piercing his eye with the bodkin 
from her hair ; combats, disguises, a tempest, the 
police, a prison — all these materials did Corneille 
laboriously combine, in order to furnish us in 
" C]itandre '' with a monstrous drama, worthy of the 
pubhc whom it was intended to please — for it is 
difficult to suppose that Corneille designed solely to 
instruct them. Perhaps he believed this himself 
thirty years afterwards, when he wrote an examina- , 
tion of this work, which he then so heartily disdained : 
our present sentiments strangely modify the remem- 
brance of our past feelings, and one of the most 
common effects of evidence, when we have been once 
struck by it, is to persuade us that we always were 
of that opinion. But at the time at which 
" Clitandre " appeared, thus to judge and sacrifice 
himself was above the taste of the author of " Melite," 
and beyond the courage of a self-love so keenly 
sensitive regarding the criticisms which had been 
passed upon his work. In the preface which he 
wrote in 1632, when "Clitandre" was printed, 
Corneille admits the obscurity which must result from 
the multiplicity of events and the brevity of the 
dialogue ; but he boasts " of having preferred to 



PIEREE COENEILLE. 153 

divert the eyes rather than importune the ears," by 
bringing upon the stage " what the ancients would 
have introduced into the dialogue " ; and he congra- 
tulates himself that, in adopting the rules, " he has 
culled their beauties, without falling into those 
inconveniences which the Greeks and Latins, who 
also followed them, were usually unable, or at least 
did not venture, to avoid." His dignity in his own 
defence is not the pride of a man who can dispense 
with the approbation of the public, but the confidence 
of an author who is certain of obtaining it, whatever 
means he may use to request it. " If I have confined 
this piece," he says, " within the rule of a single day, 
it is not because I repent of not having pursued the 
same plan in ' Melite,' or because I have resolved to 
do so in future. At the present day, some persons 
adore this rule, and many despise it ; for myself, I 
am desirous only to show that, if I depart from it, it 
is not for want of knowing it." ^ But he was anxious 
to prove himself equal in attainments to his contem- 
poraries, and superior to them in his manner of 
employing his knowledge. " If any one should 
remark coincidences in my verses," he says, " let him 
not suppose them to be thefts. I have not willingly 
borrowed from anybody, and I have always believed 
that, however fine a thought may be, you buy it 
at more than its value if it be suspected that you 

^ Preface to " Clitandre." 



154 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

have taken it from some one else ; so that, in the 
state in which I lay this piece before the public, 
I think nothing will be found in it in common with 
most modern writers, except the little vanity which I 
display here." ^ 

In the composition of " Clitandre," Corneille had 
not entirely renounced this vanity ; the pleasure of 
exhibiting his superiority to his rivals, even in a style 
of composition which he despised, had doubtless 
stimulated him not to leave any defects " wittingly " 
in his work, excepting those inseparable from the 
style itself, which he could not better disparage than 
by displaying enough talent to prove that, if the piece 
were bad, it was not the fault of the poet. He even 
took care to point out the faults which he had 
avoided ; and thus he explains, in his Preface, why 
he did not indicate the place in which the scene is 
laid. " I leave," he says, " the locality of my play to 
the choice of the reader, although it would be no 
trouble for me to name it here. If my subject be 
true, I have reasons for not mentioning it ; if it is a 
fiction, why should I, in order to conform to I don't 
know what chorography, give a fillip to history, 
assign imaginary princes to a country, and attribute 
to them adventures of which there is no record in the 
chronicles of their realm 1 " Even in his irregu- 
larities, Corneille manifested a good sense which 

^ Preface to " Clitandre." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 155 

was quite unprecedented among his contemporaries, 
and by which they were not yet in a condition to 
profit. 

After that sally of humour and self-respect which 
induced him to write " Clitandi'e," Corneille no longer 
allowed the taste of his time to rule solely and 
despotically in his works, unless it were without his 
knowledge ; he preferred to rely upon his own 
reflections, and upon the experience which he was 
daily acquiring of theatrical effects. The hour at 
which his genius was to awake had, nevertheless, 
not yet arrived ; for some time still, he will grope 
painfully for his way amidst the surrounding dark- 
ness ; but every effort will cast a ray of hght upon 
his path, and every step will be a step in advance. 
Already a natural feehng of reserve had banished 
from Corneille's works that excessive Hcense which 
was scarcely noticed by his contemporaries ; for an 
unsuccessful attempt at violation^ cannot be regarded 
as an indecency upon a stage on which a woman was 
represented as receiving her lover into her bed, 
merely recommending him to be discreet. It is only 
fair to say that after this piece of advice had been 
given, the curtain fell. If the custom of his time led 
Corneille to introduce an objectionable scene into 
" Clitandre," and to indulge in some questionable 
pleasantries in " Mehte," they had so little real 

' In " Clitandre." 



156 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

connection with these pieces, that he had no difficulty 
in omitting them from the printed versions, and 
afterwards he did not find it necessary to make any 
further curtailments. In his early days, too, he had 
composed some rather gay poems, which have never 
been inserted in the collected edition of his works. 
And at the same time that he banished from the 
stage these singular manifestations of illegitimate or 
unbridled passion, he began to infuse a little more 
truthfulness into the language of honourable affection, 
and to divorce it from the jargon of gallantry. In 
the " Veuve," a mother, inquiring about the progress 
which her daughter is making in the heart of a 
young man whom she wishes her to marry, expresses 
her dissatisfaction at the tone of his declarations, 
which lay all the divinities of Olympus under 
contribution : — 

"Ses yeux, a son avis, sont autant de soleils, 
L'enflure de son sein un double petit monde : 
C'est le seul ornement de la machine ronde. 
L'amour a ses regards allume son flambeau, 
Et souvent pour la voir il ote son bandeau. 
Diane n'eut jamais une si belle taille ; 
Aupr^s d'elle V^nus ne serait rien qui vaille : 
Ce ne sont rien qu.e lys et roses que son teint." 

The anxious mother considers this the language of 
pleasantry ; but her agent reassures her : — 

" C'est un homme tout neuf, que voulez-vous qu'il fasse ? 
II dit ce qu'il a lu." * * * * 

Corneille clearly perceived that it was not in books, 
nor even in the love-poems of his time, that he must 



PIEREE COENEILLE. 157 

seek a language capable of awakening, within the 
breasts of his audience, those sentiments which he 
was desirous to describe. In the " Galerie du Palais,'^ 
two young people, standing in front of a bookseller's 
shop, reason upon comedy, and the manner in which 
loYe is treated therein : — 

*' n n'en faut point douter, I'amour a des tendresses 
Que nous n'apprenons point qu'atipi-es de nos mattresses ; 
Tant de sortes d'appas, de doux saisissements, 
D'agr^ables langueiu's et de ravissements, 
Jusques ou d'un bel ceil peut s'etendre 1' empire, 
Et mille autres secrets que Ton ne saurait dire, 
Quoique tons nos rimeurs en mettent par ecrit, 
Ne se surent jamais par un effort d' esprit, 
Et je n'ai jamais yu de cervelles bien faites 
Qui traitassent I'amour comme font les poetes : 
, C'est tout un autre jeu. Le style d'un sonnet 
Est fort extravagant dedans tm cabinet ; 
n y faut bien louer la beaute qu'on adore, 
Sans mepriser Venus, sans medire de Flore ; 
Sans que I'eclat des lys, des roses, d'un beau jour. 
Ait rien a demeler avecque notre amour. 
O pauvre Comedie ! objet de tant de peines. 
Si tu n'es qu'tm portrait des actions humaiaes, 
On te tire souvent sur un origiaal, 
A qui, pom- dire vrai, tu ressembles fort mal." 

The natural good sense, by which Corneille was 
distinguished, is sometimes productive of singular 
effects by its mixture with those false habits from the 
influence of which the poet had not yet escaped. In 
the " Place Royale," his fifth comedy, a young girl, 
unworthily treated by the man she loves, and by 
whom she beheved she was loved, bursts into anger 
against him ; and when her perfidious admirer, who is 
anxious to drive her to extremities, insolently presents 



]58 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

her with a mirror that she may behold therein the 
reasons for his indifference, she exclaims : — 

" S'il me dit des d^fauts autant ou plus que toi, 
D^loyal, pour le moins il n'en dit rien qu'k moi : 
C'est dedans son cristal que je les etudie ; 
Mais apres il s'en tait, et moi j'y remedie ; 
II m'en donne un avis sans me les reprocher, 
Et me les d^couvrant, il m'aide a les cacher." 

To this very ill-timed outbreak, who would not answer 
in the words of Alidor, her false lover : — 

" Vous etes en colere, et vous dites des pointes ! " 

This criticism is so just, that we are surprised tha.t 
the good sense which dictated it to the poet did not 
preserve him from incurring it ; but the first step in 
advance is to perceive the truth ; the second, and most 
difficult, is to obey it. 

In the conduct of his pieces, Corneille's progress was 
more sure and rapid. The plot, being arranged with 
greater care and skill, fastens upon the curiosity ; and 
all the characters present themselves with a marked 
physiognomy which distinguishes them from each 
other. These distinctive features are, in truth, more 
the result of fancies of the imagination than of natural 
dispositions and real varieties of character. An 
Alidor wishes to desert his mistress because she is so 
perfect and so tender that she gives him no cause for 
complaint to justify him in abandoning her, and 
because he loves her too much to be master of his 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 159 

own liberty, when she is near. A Cehdie ^ takes a 
sudden Hking for a new comer, and in order to 
gratify her taste, strives to banish the feehngs which 
speak within her breast on behalf of a faithful lover, 
to whom she has pHghted her troth. These various 
whimsies are often rendered with a vivacity which 
somewhat diminishes their absurdity. Corneille's 
mind enlarged daily, but he had not yet discovered 
the legitimate and great use of his increasing powers ; 
instead of turning his attention to that inexhaustible 
source, the observation of nature, he wasted his 
strength in efforts to make the best of the barren 
field which he had chosen. He daily acquired greater 
industry, but his art remained stationary at nearly 
the same point ; and Corneille had as yet succeeded 
only in showing what he could do in a style of com- 
position in which excellence could be attained by 
no one. 

Six works,^ the fruits of his earliest labours, had 
laid the basis of his fortune and established his 
reputation. The favour of Cardinal RicheHeu had 
not overlooked his rising genius, and Corneille shared 
with Colletet and Bois-Robert the honour of working, 
under the orders, supervision, and direction of His 
Eminence, at those pieces which were laboriously 

^ In the " Galerie du Palais." 
2 These were, "M(^lite," in 1629; "Clitandre," in 1632; the "Veuve," 
in 1633 ; the " Galerie du Palais " and the "Suivante," in 1634; and the 
" Place Royale," in 1635. 



160 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

brought into being by the will of a minister, and the 
talents of five authors.^ Lauded by his competitors 
in the dramatic career, Corneille was still regarded 
by them merely as one of the partners in that 
literary glory which was common to them all : satis- 
fied with their possession of bad taste, they were far 
from anticipating that revolution which was soon to 
overthrow its empire and their own. 

This revolution was not inaugurated by Corneille. 
It is difiicult, at the present day, to divine what lucky 
chance dictated Mairet's " Sophonisbe," the only one 
of his pieces in which he rises at all superior to the 
taste of his times. Its merits taught nothing to its 
author, to whom it was nothing more than a piece of 
good fortune ; but there is reason to believe that it 
revealed to Corneille the powers of his own genius. 
"Sophonisbe" appeared in 1633. Corneille, then 
known only as a comic poet,^ not even knowing 
himself in any other character, and incapable of 
discerning tragedy amid that accumulated heap of 
whimsical and puerile inventions which he had, as it 
were in spite of himself, imitated in " Clitandre," — 
Corneille suddenly learned that it was possible for 

^ These five authors were L'Etoile, Colletet, Bois-Robert, Rotrou, and 
Corneille, who, according to Voltaire, was " rather subordinate to the 
others, who exceeded him in fortune or in favour," and who were probably 
more docile in a work in which it was necessary to take care not to display 
either originality or independence. 

2 Mairet addressed to him, on the appearance of his " Veuve," some 
lines headed : " A Monsieur Corneille, poete comique." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 161 

another kind of tragedy to exist. In the midst of 
that comic triviahty from which Mairet was unable to 
free either his plot, or the tone of his characters, 
Corneille perceived that great interests were treated 
of, and many feelings depicted with considerable 
power. The sensitive chord had been touched ; his 
fine native faculties, placed far above the circle within 
which he was confined by habit, awoke and demanded 
their manifestation. Henceforward he resolved to seek 
the subjects of his pictures beyond this hmited sphere : 
he turned his eyes towards antiquity ; Seneca 
presented himself, and in 1635, " Medee "appeared. 

" Souverains protecteurs des lois de rHymen^e, 
Dieux garants de la foi que Jason m'a donnde ! 
Vous qu'il prit a t^moin d'une immortelle ardeur, 
Quand par vm faux serment il vainquit ma pudeur 



I " 1 



" These lines,'' says Voltaire, " announce the advent 
of Corneille." ^ They did more — they inaugurated 
tragedy in France : the tragic Muse had at length 
appeared to Corneille ; and her features, though still 
roughly sketched out, could no longer be mistaken. 
Neither the ridiculous love of old Egeus, nor the 
puerile desire manifested by Creusa to possess Medea's 
robe, nor the frequently ignoble style of the time, nor 
the absence of art discernible throughout the piece, 
will deter from a perusal of " Medee " any person 
who has had the courage to prepare for it by a 

1 Corneille, " M^d^e," act i, scene 4. 
2 Voltaire, " Commentaires." 



162 • LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

slight acquaintance with the drama of that period. 
On coming to this composition it seems as though, 
after having long wandered without object, compass, 
or hope, we had at last disembarked upon firm 
ground, from whence we can perceive, in the distance, 
a fertile and luxuriant country. Imagination and 
reflection appear at last applied to objects worthy of 
their notice ; important feelings assume the place of 
childish mental amusements, and Corneille already 
manifests his wondrous powers of expression. We 
already perceive in Medea's '' Moi,'' so far superior to 
Seneca's " Medea superest,'"* an example of that ener- 
getic conciseness to which he could reduce the expres- 
sion of the loftiest and most sublime sentiments. In 
the following lines, which he has not imitated from 
the Latin tragedian — 

" Me peut-il bien quitter aprt^is tant de bienfaits ? 
M'ose-t-il bien quitter apres tant de forfaits ? " 

we are struck by the force and depth of thought that 
he can include in the simplest expressions ; and, in 
that scene in which Medea discusses with Creon the 
reasons which he may have for expelling her from his 
dominions, we acknowledge the presence of a power- 
ful and serious reason, not often met with in the 
poetry of that time, and which gained for Corneille this 
eulogy from the English poet. Waller : " The others 
make plenty of verses, but Corneille is the only one 
who can think ! '' Even thus early he displayed that 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 163 

close and rigorous dialectics, which the recollection of 
his original studies, as much perhaps as the spirit of 
his time, caused too frequently to degenerate into 
subtilties, but which, whenever it struck fully, dealt 
irresistible blows. 

It is of little importance to inquire whether Cor- 
neille, in " Medee," borrowed from Seneca or not ; 
for more than a century, his predecessors and con- 
temporaries had not been wanting in models. In a 
translation of Seneca's "Agamemnon," pubhshed by 
Rolland Brisset, less than fifty years before, Clytem- 
nestra called Electra a hussy; and this line of Trissino's 
"Sofonisba,''— 

" E rimirando lui, penso a me stesso." 

was, in 1583, about the same period, thus translated 
by Claude Mermet, — 

" En voyant sa ruine et perte non pareille, 
Bien m' advise qu'autant m'en peut pendre £i roreille." 

To raise to the elevation of noble sentiments, great 
interests, and lofty thoughts a poetical language 
which had never had to express anything but tender 
or natural feehngs and ingenious or delicate ideas, was 
an achievement which Ronsard had commenced in 
reference to general poetry ; and this task CorneiUe 
first undertook for dramatic poetry, which, though 
regarded as a more exact representation of nature, 
imitated her only in those grosser forms in which she 
sometimes appeared amidst a state of society still 

M 2 



164< LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

sadly deficient in delicacy and respect for propriety. 
It was a matter of little consequence whether an idea 
belonged originally to Corneille or to Seneca ; but it 
was essential that that idea, whoever its original 
inventor might have been, should not be robbed of all 
nobleness and gravity by expressions which conveyed 
to the mind none but the most ridiculous images ; ^ 
it was essential that details of the most puerile 
familiarity ^ should not be allowed to occupy a stage 
destined for the exhibition of higher interests ; it was 
essential that personages supposed to move in the 
highest circles of society, and to be actuated by 
mighty passions or important designs, should not 
use language similar to that employed by the vulgar 
herd in its brutal rage ; ^ in a word, it was essential, 
by propriety, precision and careful choice of terms, to 
establish, between the style and the subject, a harmony 
which had previously been utterly unknown. This was 

^ In Mairet^s " Sylvie," a prince, in despair at the death cf his mistress, 
whom he deplores in a most tragic tone, speaks of his heart as a place — 
" Oh. I'amour avait fait son plus beau cabinet." 
^ In Scudery's " Didon," written in 1636, after ^neas and Dido, being 
forced by a storm to take refuge in a grotto, have given each other proofs 
of their mutual love, -^neas advances on the stage to look at the weather, 
and says to the Queen, who had remained in the grotto : — 
"Madame, il ne pleut plus; votre Majesty sorte." 
Then, being requested by her to climb upon a rock to summon her sister 
and suite to join them, he shouts out : — 

" Hola ! hi ! L'on r^pond ; la voix est d^ja proche. 
Hola! hi! la voicy ? * * * " 

3 Syphax, in Mairefs " Sophonisbe," calls his wife impudent and brazen- 
faced. It is true that she deserved both epithets ; but they are rather 
beneath the dignity of tragedy. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 165 

a lesson which neither Seneca nor any other poet could 
teach Corneille. His genius alone raised him to a level 
with lofty thoughts, and he expressed them, as he had 
conceived them, in all their grandeur and sublimity. 

" After writing ' Med^e,' " says Fontenelle, " Cor- 
neille fell back again into comedy ; and if I 
may venture to say what I think, the fall was 
great/^^ I shall therefore say nothing of the 
" Illusion Comique," the last production of what we 
may call Corneille's youth, in which, taking leave of 
that fantastic taste which he was soon to annihilate, 
he gave himself up to its vagaries with a recklessness 
which might be charged with neghgence, if CorneiUe's 
anxiety for success had ever allowed him to be 
negligent. This is the only one of his pieces into 
which he has introduced the " Matamore," a principal 
character in the comedies of the time, borrowed from 
the Spanish drama, as the name indicates,^ and 
whose comicahty consists in bragging of the most 
extravagant achievements while giving continual 
proofs of the basest cowardice. The amorous con- 
quests of the Matamore are on a par w^ith his 
warlike exploits ; Corneille's hero once delayed the 
dawn of day — Aurora was nowhere to be found, 
because, he says, she had gone — 

" Au milieu de ma chambre k m'ofirir ses beaut^s." 



' Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," vol. iii. p. 94. 
2 " Capitan Mata-moroe," Captain Moor-killer. 



166 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Scarron describes a hero of the same kind, who, for 
pastime, had — 

"* * * Rou^ la fortune, 
Ecorch^ le hasard et brUl^ le malheur." 

After the production of " Medee/^ such eccen- 
tricities were no longer allowable in Corneille ; and 
the " Illusion Comique '' would not be deserving of 
mention, if, by a singular coincidence, the date of its 
first performance^ did not justify us in supposing 
that, even while his humour was taking such fantastic 
flights, Corneille was already busy with the " Cid/' 

The genius of Corneille had at length discovered 
its true vocation ; but, timid and modest almost to 
humility, although inwardly conscious of his powers, 
he did not yet venture to rely upon himself alone. 
Before bringing new beauties to light, he had need, 
not of a guide to direct him, but of an authority upon 
which he could fall back for support ; and he resorted 
to imitation, not to reinforce his own strength, but 
to obtain a pledge for his success. The Court had 
brought into fashion the study of the Spanish lan- 
guage and literature, and men of taste had discovered 
therein beauties which we were still far from having 
attained. M. de ChMon, who had been secretary to 
the Queen-mother, Marie de Medici, had retired, in 
his old age, to Eouen. Corneille, emboldened by the 
success of his first pieces, called upon him : " Sir," 

* During tlie year 1635. 



PIEERE CORNEILLE. 167 

said the old courtier to him, after having praised him 
for his wit and talents, " the pursuit of comedy, which 
you have embraced, can only bring you fleeting 
renown ; you will find, in the Spanish authors, sub- 
jects which, if treated according to our taste, by such 
hands as yours, will produce immense elBFect. Learn 
their language ; it is easy. I will teach you all I 
know of it, and until you are competent to read it 
yourself, I will translate for you some passages from 
Guillermo de Castro/' ^ Whether Corneille was in- 
debted to himself or to his old friend for the choice 
of the subject of the " Cid," the " Cid '' soon belonged 
to himself alone. 

The success of the " Cid,'' in 1636, constitutes an 
era in our dramatic history ; it is not necessary now 
to explain the causes of the brilliant reception which 
it obtained. " Before the production of Corneille's 
' Cid,' " says Voltaire, " men were unacquainted with 
that conflict of passions which rends the heart, and 
in the presence of which all other beauties of art are 
dull and inanimate." Neither passion, nor duty, nor 
tenderness, nor magnanimity had previously been 
introduced upon the stage ; and now, love and 
honour, as they may be conceived by the most 
exalted imagination, appeared suddenly, and for the 



^ This anecdote was related by Pere Toumemine, one of Comeille's 
tutors at the Jesuit College at Rouen. See the "Recherches sur les 
Theatres de la France," vol. ii. p. 157. 



168 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

first time, in all their glory, before a public by whom 
honour was considered the first of virtues, and 
love the chief business of life. " Their enthusiasm 
was carried to the greatest transports ; they could 
never grow tired of beholding the piece ; nothing else 
was talked of in society ; everybody knew some part 
of it by heart ; children committed it to memory ; 
and in some parts of France it passed into a proverb : — 
That is as fine as the Cid^ ^ 

Although carried away at first in the general 
stream, astounded at his remarkable success, and 
reduced to silence by their amazement, Corneille's 
rivals soon regained breath, and their first sign of life 
was an act of resistance against the torrent which 
threatened to sweep them into annihilation. The 
instinct of self-preservation gave unity to their efforts, 
and, with the single exception of Rotrou, the insur- 
rection was general. A powerful auxiliary undertook 
to support and direct their movements. 

At the distance at which we stand from these 
events, it is difiicult to assign any cause for Cardinal 
Richelieu's violent participation in this struggle against 
public opinion. Of all the motives which have been 
ascribed to him, the least probable is that ridiculous 
jealousy which it is said that the minister entertained 
against the poet who laboured in his service. The 
hterary self-love of Richelieu was certainly very 

1 Pelisson, '' Histoire de rAcad^mie Fran9aise," p. 186. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 169 

susceptible, but his vanity as a nobleman must have 
served as a counterpoise to it ; and a poetical prime 
minister could not possibly have felt any idea of 
emulation, nor consequently of jealousy, for a mere 
professional poet. That " vast ambition " of which 
Fontenelle speaks, ^ and which could so easily reduce 
itself to the dimensions of the smallest objects, was, 
according to all appearance, the ambition of power 
rather than a craving after glory. The suffrages of 
public opinion lose much of their value in the eyes of 
men who are raised above its censure; and a 
powerful minister feels great inchnation to believe 
that obedience is approval. 

Corneille was, however, unacquainted with that art 
which is so necessary to render obedience flattering. 
" At the end of 1635, a year before the performance 
of the ' Cid,' the Cardinal had given in the Palais- 
Cardinal, now called the Palais-Royal, the comedy of 
the * Thuilleries,' all the scenes of which he had 
himself arranged. Corneille, who was more docile to 
hiS genius than subservient to the will of a prime 
minister, thought it necessary to make some alteration 
in the third act, which had been entrusted to him. 
This estimable liberty was ascribed to false motives 
by two of his colleagues, and gave great offence to 
the Cardinal, who told him that he must have an 
esprit de suite, by which he meant that submission 

' Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," p. 97. 



170 LIFE AKD WRITINGS OF 

which blindly obeys the orders of superiors." ^ What- 
ever meaning may be ascribed to words spoken in an 
angry moment, the disposition which had dictated 
them was not hkely to be mollified by such a success 
as the " Cid " had obtained without the orders of the 
minister. There is even reason to believe that, before 
achieving this insolent success, Corneille had seen 
marks of preference bestowed upon his associates, 
which he had disregarded ; and to fill up the 
measure of his offences he seemed to boast of not 
having obtained them : — 

" Mon travail sans appui monte sur le tli^§,tre. 
***** 
Par d'illustres avis je n'^blotiis personne. 
***** 

Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renomm^e." ^ 

These lines he printed in 1636, between the 
appearance of " Medee " and that of the " Cid." 
This was doubtless a part of his crime. Astonished 
that any one should consider himself independent, 
and indignant that he should venture to declare it, 
Richelieu believed himself set at defiance. The 
enemies of Corneille, says Voltaire, " his rivals in the 
pursuit of glory and favour, had described him as an 

1 Voltaire's Preface'^ to the " Cid." He adds that " this anecdote was 
well-known to the last piiaces of the house of Vendome, the grandsons of 
C^sar de Vendome, who was present at the performance of this piece of 
the Cardinal's." 

2 Corneille, "■ Excuse a Ariste." It is well known that this piece gained 
its author a host of enemies. It was frequently quoted during the quarrel 
that arose about the " Cid," 



PIERKE CORNEILLE. 171 

upstart spirit who ventured to brave the first minister, 
and who looked with contempt not only upon their 
works, but also upon the taste of their protector." 
They did not neglect this opportunity of satisfying 
their jealousy by the basest means. As Corneille 
lived at Rouen, and came to Paris only to arrange 
for the performance of his pieces, his only weapons 
against their attacks were his successes, and even these 
were turned into arms against him. The success of the 
" Cid " was regarded as an insult by the resentment of 
a protector whom he had neglected and irritated ; and 
it appeared, in his eyes, the triumph of a rebel. 

All arms were considered good enough to attack 
him ; Scudery was thought less ridiculous, and even 
Claveret ^ was deemed a worthy and useful auxiliary. 
The Cardinal wrote, by means of Bois-Eobert, to 
Mairet, who had praised the " Veuve," but declared 
against the " Cid " : " His Eminence has read with 
extreme pleasure all that has been written on the 
subject of the ' Cid,' and particularly a letter of yours 
which was shown to him." In this letter, Corneille's 
answers to the gross insults of his enemies are called 
libels ; and, though he had not read them, his 
Eminence, on seeing their rejoinders, " presupposed 
that he had been the aggressor." ^ 

^ The unknown author of a few dramas and other works, which are very 
bad even for the time at which they were written. 

2 See Bois- Robert's letter to Mairet, in the preface to the " Cid," and in 
Abhe Gi'anet's " Recueil des Dissertations sur Corneille et Racine." 



172 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

The bitterness of Corneille's enemies may easily 
be conceived by the humihty of their confessions. 
Scudery thus begins his attack upon the " Cid " : — 
" There are certain pieces, Hke certain animals that 
exist in nature, which, at a distance, look like stars, 
and which, on close inspection, are only worms." He 
then expresses his astonishment that such fantastic 
beauties '' should have deluded wisdom as well as 
ignorance, and the Court as well as the citizen " ; and, 
begging pardon of that public whom he thinks it his 
duty to enlighten, he " conjures honourable persons to 
suspend their judgment for a little while, and not to 
condemn without a hearing the ' Sophonisbe,' the 
' Cesar/ ^ the ' Cleopatre,' ^ the ' Hercule,^ ^ the 
' Marianne,' ^ the ' Cleomedon,' ^ and a host of 
other illustrious heroes who have charmed them on 
the stage.'^ Satisfied with this cry of distress, 
Corneille might well have pardoned enemies who, at 
the outset, confessed themselves vanquished. But 
even self-love has its humility, and will disdain no 
opponent. Such is the strange mixture of loftiness 
and timidity, of vigour of imagination and simplicity 
of judgment ! By his success alone Corneille had 
become aware of his talents ; but when once he 
knew his own powers, he became, and remained, 

1 By Scudery. 2 gy Benserade. ' By Eotrou. ^ By Tristan. 

5 By Duryer. Most of these pieces had been performed during the same 
year as the " Cid," which, as it appears, was not brought on the stage until 
the end of the year. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 173 

fully convinced of their extent and worth. As soon 
as he felt that Corneille was a superior man, he 
said so, without imagining that any one could 
doubt it : — 

" Je sais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu'on m'en dit," 

he says himself in the " Excuse a Ariste ; " and, in 
the same piece, he speaks thus of his genius : — 

" Quittant souvent la terre, en quittant la bam^re, 
Puis d'un vol dlevd se cachant dans les cieiix, 
II rit du desespoir de tous ses envieux. 
***** 

Je pense toutefois n'avoir point de rival, 
A qui je fasse tort en le traitant d'^gal." 

It is not to be wondered at, that, holding this opinion 
of himself, Corneille considered the first criticisms of 
his works as an insult to evidence. Afterwards, 
however, they caused him some anxiety, both regard- 
ing his glory, and the opinion which he had formed of 
it. He was afraid to call in question that which he 
had beheved to be certain ; and he struggled against 
such a contingency at first, with the haughtiness of 
conviction, but afterwards, with the violence of fear. 

At this juncture in his history, when Corneille is 
about to enter personally into the lists in opposi- 
tion to such powerful enemies, it is necessary that we 
should obtain a complete idea of his character and 
position, in order to be able rightly to judge both 
of the necessity for making concessions, and of 
the courage requisite for resistance. Corneille was 



174 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

immediately dependent upon the Cardinal, whom, in a 
letter to Scuderj, he calls " your master and mine/' ^ 
This expression shocked Voltaire ; but it was not at all 
at variance with the customs of Corneille's time. At 
a period when gentlemen of the highest birth entered 
the service of others more rich than themselves ; ^ 
when money was the natural price paid for all ser- 
vices,^ and wealth a sort of suzerainty^ which collected 
around itself vassals ready to pay it a kind of homage 
which was considered perfectly legitimate, we need 
not be surprised that a burgess of Rouen felt no 
shame in considering himself almost a domestic,^ or, 

1 See the " Reponse aux observations sur le * Cid.' " He was in 
receipt of a pension from the Cardinal. 

2 Cardinal de Retz, when merely Ahh6 de Gondi, during his travels in 
Italy, had in his suite " seven or eight gentlemen, four of whom were 
Knights of Malta." " Memoirs of De Retz," vol. i. pp. 16, 17. 

3 It appears that, independently of the prologue in verse with which 
authors sometimes preceded their pieces, the first performance was opened 
by a sort of prose prologue, in which the authors were named. Cardinal de 
Richelieu, feeling desirous that Chapelain should consent to have his name 
mentioned in the prologue to the comedy of the " Thuilleries," " besought 
him to lend him his name on this occasion," adding that, in return, he 
" would lend him his purse when he needed it." It is to be hoped, for the 
honour of Chapelain's taste, that he set a high price on the performance of 
a service of this kind. 

* That sort of pride which maintains equality of condition under in- 
equality of fortune, was then completely unknown. " I have never been 
touched with avarice," says the Abbe de Marolles, " nor of a htmiour to ask 
for anything, although presents from rich and disinterested persons would 
have been agreeable to me, because they requii'e no return, except pure 
civilities, which give no trouble ; whereas presents from poor persons, or 
equals, always compel us to give greater ones." " M^mou-es de Marolles," 
vol. ii. p. 143. 

^ Domestic was the title then assumed by all those who were attached to 
the service of powerful men. Pelisson speaks of several Academicians who 
were domestics of Chancellor Seguier. ("Histoire de I'Acad^mie," p. 156.) 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 175 

if you prefer it, a subject of an all-powerful minister, 
whose liberality was his mainstay, and in whose favour 
his hopes were centred. The increased power and 
diffusion of knowledge have, in our day, enhanced the 
worth of merit, and established a juster proportion 
between man and things. The honest man has 
learned to estimate himself at his true value, and to 
respect himself even when his fortunes are low ; he 
has learned that the reception of a benefit cannot 
enslave him, and has felt that he must not solicit 
benefits in return for which he is expected to give 
gratitude only, and not personal work. Quickened 
by that instinctive feehng of delicate pride which has 
been developed in us by education, and which a 
regard for propriety maintains even in those over 
whom it exercises the least influence, we shall meet 
with many actions and words, in the life of Corneille, 
utterly at variance with our ideas and habits. We 
shall pass with surprise from his tragedies to his 
dedicatory epistles ; and we shall blush to see the 
same hand — 

" * * * La main qui crayonna 
L'^me du grand Pompee et I'esprit de Cinna," ^ 

stretched forth, if we may be allowed the expression. 

La Rocliepot, a cousin-german and intimate friend of that Abb^ de Gondi, 
who had four Knights of Malta in his suite, was a domestic of the Duke of 
Orleans. ("Memou-es of De Retz," vol. i. p. 21.) It is not impossible that 
Corneille may have had the title of some office in the Cardinal's house- 
hold. 

* See the letter to Fouquet, printed at the beginning of " (Edipe," in 
Voltaire's edition ; and in vol. x. p. 75, of the edition of 1758. 



176 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

to solicit liberalities which it did not always obtain/ 
We shall ask ourselves whether the same man could 
thus alternately rise to such lofty heights of genius 
and descend to such depths of abasement ; and we 
shall find that, influenced sometimes by his genius 
and sometimes by his circumstances, he really was 
not the same man in both positions. 

Let us first look at Gorneille in his social relations. 
Destitute of all that distinguishes a man from his 
equals, he seems to be irrevocably doomed to pass 
unnoticed in the crowd. His appearance is common,^ 
his conversation dull, his language incorrect, ^ his 
timidity awkward, his judgment uncertain, and his 

1 See his " Epitre de la Po^sie k la Peinture," in which he speaks of 
liberality as a virtue which has been so long banished from the Court that 
even its name has been forgotten : — 

" J' en fais souvent reproche k ce elimat heureux ; 
Je me plains aux plus grands comme aux plus g^ndreux ; 
Par trop m'en plaindre en vain je deviens ridicule ; 
Ou Ton ne m'entend pas, ou bien Ton dissimule." 

CorneiUe, " OEuvres," vol. x. p. 81. 

2 " The first time I saw him, I took him for a shopkeeper," says Vigneul- 
Marville, in his "Melanges d'Histoire et de Litt^rature," vol. ii. p. 167- 
" M. CorneiUe was rather large and full of body, and very simple and 
common in appearance," says Fontenelle, in his "Vie de CorneiUe," vol. 
iii, p. 124. He had, however, according to Fontenelle, " a rather agreeable 
countenance, a large nose, a pretty mouth, eyes full of fire, an animated 
physiognomy, and very marked features, well-adapted to be transmitted to 
posterity by means of a medallion or a bust." 

3 "Another is simple and timid, very tiresome in conversation; he 
takes one word for another. * * He cannot recite his own pieces, nor 
read his own writing." La Bruyere, " Des Jugements," vol. ii. p. 84. " His 
conversation was so dull that it became burdensome, even if it lasted only 
a short time. He never spoke the French language very correctly." 
Vigneul-Marville, vol. ii. pp. 167, 168. "His pronunciation was not alto- 
gether clear ; he read his poems forcibly, but not with grace. In order 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 177 

experience perfectly childish. If he finds himself 
brought into contact, either by necessity or chance, 
with persons whom birth or fortune have placed 
above him, he does not rightly appreciate the position 
which he occupies in respect to them, but thinks only 
of the one connection of protector and protected, 
which subsists between him and them. Of all their 
different titles to consideration, he regards only the 
claims which they may possibly have to his gratitude, 
and thus he will place a Montauron ^ on a level with, 



to find out the great Corneille, it was necessary to read him." Fontenelle, 
p. 125. It was said that he was worth hearing only at the Hotel de Bour- 
gogne, and he was so conscious of this that he says himself, in his " Letter 
to Pelisson : " — 

" Et Ton peut rarement m'ecouter sans ennuy. 
Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autruL" 

Corneille, " CEuvres," vol. x. p. 124. 
^ The partisan Montauron, to whom Corneille dedicated " Cinna." In 
his dedicatory epistle he compares him to Augustus, because Augustus 
imited clemency with liberality. M. de Montauron, who was as liberal as 
Augustus, must necessarily, like him, possess both virtues conjointly. It 
is somewhat singular that, in several editions in which this epistle is con- 
tained, the epithets liberal and generous, applied to M. de Montauron, are 
printed in large characters like those used for the words Monseigneur or 
Voire Altesse, in order to point out M. de Montauron's title to this kind of 
homage. It is said that the dedication of " Cinna " gained Corneille a 
thousand pistoles. It is added that he at first intended to dedicate this 
play to Cardinal Mazarin ; but he preferred M. de Montauron, because he 
paid better. Although men were accustomed to the most inflated style of 
eulogy, great fault was found with Corneille for this epistle ; and praises 
of this kind, written on such terms, were called thenceforward dedications 
a la Montauron. The eleventh article of the "Parnasse R^form^ " declares : 
*' We suppress all panegyrics a la Montawron." This Montauron having 
ruined himself, Scarron wrote : — 

" Ce n'est que maroquin perdu 

Que les livres que Ton d^die, 

Depuis que Montauron mendie." 



178 LIFE AKD WRITINGS OF 

if not above, Richelieu and Mazarin. It is always 
possible to determine by the nature of the homage 
which Corneille pays, the amount of the reward he 
received for it ; and the excessive character of his 
eulogies will never prove anything but the excess of 
his gratitude. Nothing in these panegyrics seems to 
be at all repugnant to those feehngs which he had 
not raised above his position ; and in most of his 
actions, he is nothing more than what fortune 
made him. 

" Let him elevate himself by composition ; he is 
not inferior to Augustus, Pompey, Nicomedes, or 
Heraclius. He is a king, and a great king ; he is a 
politician — nay more, a philosopher.'^ ^ He has 
passed into a new sphere ; a new horizon has opened 
before him ; he has escaped from the trammels of a 
position which bound down his imagination to the 
interests of a fortune far inferior to his faculties ; he 
can now appreciate all the duties necessarily imposed 
upon generous souls, by an important existence, a 
lofty destiny, and the possibility and expectation of 
glory ; and with all the force of deep, inward con- 
viction, he has laid upon his heroes obligations which 
he had not been accustomed to attach to the humble 
social existence of Pierre Corneille.^ 

^ La Bruyere, " Caracteres," vol. ii. p. 84. 
2 " He clothes his old heroes with all that is noble in the imagination ; 
and you would say that he forbids himself the use of his own property, as 
if he were not worthy of it." Saint-Evremond, "CEuvres," vol. iii, p. 246. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 179 

There is, however^ one point on which he is raised 
by this existence above the vulgar herd — his works 
issued from the obscurity in which his hfe was spent. 
By his Kterary renown he acquired pubhc import- 
ance ; and thenceforward, he regarded his renown as 
an object of duty. In his works he pays proper 
respect to himself ; with them were connected not only 
the honour of his glory, but also the dignity of his cha- 
racter; he would deem himself degraded if he did not 
acknowledge their merit with all the frankness and 
boldness of a champion entrusted with their defence, 
or if he consented to abdicate the rank in which they 
had placed him. " It is not your fault," he says to 
Scudery, " that, from that first rank in which I am 
placed by many competent persons, I have not 
descended lower even than Claveret. * * * Of a 
truth, I should justly be reprehensible if I were 
incensed against you on account of a matter which 
has proved the accomplishment of my glory, and 
from which the ' Cid ' has gained this advantage, 
that, out of the multitude of poems which have 
appeared up to this time, it is the only one whose 
hrilliancy has obhged envy to take up its pen." ^ 

Nevertheless, even while defending himself so 
proudly, Corneille did not depart from the ordinary 
ideas and habits of his conduct, in those things which 
concerned him as a man, and not as a poet. He 

> Corneille, " R^ponse aux Observations de Scudeiy." 

N 2 



ISO LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

evidently believed in two very distinct kinds of 
honour, which it appeared to him all the more ridi- 
culous to confound together, as he made no use at 
all of one of them. The same man who, in the 
" Cid,'' had dilated so loftily upon the duties imposed 
by honour upon brave men/ did not think it neces- 
sary to fulfil those duties himself ; and looking at his 
physical courage as entirely unconcerned in the ques- 
tion, he thus rephed to Scudery's rhodomontades : ^ 
" There is no necessity for knowing how much nobler 
or more valiant you may be than myself, in order 
to judge how far superior the ' Cid ' is to the 
* Amant liberal/ ^ ''^ ''' I am not a fighting man ; so 
that, in that respect, you have nothing to fear." 
Corneille was no longer either a Count of Gormas, or 
a Don Rodrigue, but a man whose glory consisted in 
writing fine poetry, and not in fighting ; though bold 
enough to brave the resentment of a minister by 
defending compositions which gained him universal 
admiration, he would not expose himself to a sword- 



^ At a time when efforts were being made to abolisli duelling, it was 
found necessaiy to omit as dangerous the following lines, in which the 
Count of Gormas replied to Don Fernand's attempts to reconcile him to 
Don Diegue : — 

" Les satisfactions n'appaisent point une 4me ; 

Qui les regoit n'a rien ; qui les fait se diffame ; 

Et de tous ces accords, I'effet le plus commun 

Est de dishonorer deux hommes au lieu d'un," 

^ Contained in a private letter, in which Scud^ry had sent him a sort of 

challenge. 

3 One of Scudery's worst comedies. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 181 

thrust, in order to establish a reputation for courage, 
about which no one felt any interest. He thought it 
marvellous that such an idea should have found its 
way into a literary discussion ; so he looked with equal 
contempt on Scudery's challenge and his arguments, 
without deigning an answer to either ; and did not 
think himself more dishonoured by being less valiant 
than a practised swordsman, than he could be by 
refusing to appear in a character which was not his 
own. So strong was his conviction that the honour 
of Corneille did not depend upon his physical courage! 
The tone, however, which these disputes assumed 
convinced Cardinal Richelieu of the necessity of 
putting a stop to them. In order to insure the 
triumph of the cause which he promoted, he judged 
it more prudent to appeal to the authority of a 
tribunal, than to leave the decision to the issue of a 
combat in which the voice of the people — which, in 
this case, was certainly " the voice of God '^ — did not 
seem disposed to give judgment in his favour. 
Silence was, therefore, imposed upon both parties, 
pending the decision of the Academy, which, for the 
second time, found itself involuntarily invested with 
the dangerous honours of authority.^ In vain did 
it allege its well-grounded fear of making its young 

' Scudery had written to submit his case to the judgment of the 
Academy, and the Cai'dinal expressed a wish that it should pronounce 
upon the matter. Pelisson, " Histoire de 1' Academic," p. 189, 



182 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

existence odious by the exercise of a power which it 
was not admitted to possess. The wisest of its 
members said, " that it was barely tolerated, upon 
the simple supposition that it claimed some authority 
over the language : what would be the result if it 
manifested any desire to vindicate that authority, 
and undertook to exercise it over a work which had 
satisfied the majority, and gained the approbation of 
the people ? '' ^ The Cardinal was not, however, to be 
deterred from his purpose by such arguments as 
these : as Pelisson says, " they appeared to him of 
very little importance/' But the Academy now 
urged conformity to its statutes, which enacted 
" that it could not judge a work without the consent 
and request of the author ; " and Corneille was not 
disposed to remove this obstacle. In vain did Bois- 
Robert employ all the efforts of a Court friendship to 
obtain the accomplishment of his master's desires. 
By his residence at Court, Corneille had at least 
learned those formalities by which trickery may 
be frustrated. " He continually maintained,'' says 
Pelisson, " a complimentary tone, and answered that 
such an occupation was not worthy of the Academy ; 
that a libel which deserved no answer was beneath 
its notice ; that the consequences of giving an 
opinion on the matter would be dangerous, because 
it would give envy a pretext for continually 

^ Pelisson, " Histoire de I'Academie," p. 190, 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 183 

appealing to their decision ; and that as soon as a 
fine piece had appeared on the stage, the poetasters 
would think themselves justified in bringing charges 
against its author before the members of the 
Academy." ^ These unanswerable reasons were 
urged in reply to Bois-Robert's reiterated entreaties ; 
and the force of these reasons, independently of all 
personal considerations, resisted all the insinuations 
of a pretended friendship. At length, it became 
necessary to change these insinuations into positive 
language, and formally to announce the wish of a 
minister with whom a desire was a command. 
Then, also, it became necessary to understand clearly 
and answer distinctly. After Corneille had once 
more repeated his usual objections, " there escaped 
fi'om him," says Pelisson, " this addition : ' The 
gentlemen of the Academy may do as they please ; 
as you write that Monseigneur would be glad to 
have their judgment, and that it would divert his 
Eminence, I have nothing more to say.' " ^ 

Corneille might regard these last words as a 
refusal,^ but Richelieu would take them for a consent. 
The Academy still resisted : and authority, driven to 
its utmost hmits, used its last resources. " Tell those 

^ Pelisson, " Histoire de rAcad^mie," p, 192. 2 jj^j^ p_ jgg^ 

3 See in Voltaire's edition of Corneille, vol. i. p. 159, the preface placed 
at the commencement of the " Cid," after the death of the Cardinal, in 
which he formally denies ever having "agreed on judges regarding his 
merit," as he would consider such a proceeding " a disgraceful blot on his 
reputation." 



184 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

gentlemen that I desire it, and that I shall love them 
as they love me." These were the last words which 
the minister had to utter ; the Academy, like 
Corneille, thought it had nothing more to say. 

It obeyed ; but the danger, nevertheless, continued. 
Richelieu had intended to obtain support, and not 
opposition, to his opinion. Angry remarks,^ appended 
by him to the report of the Academy, which was 
always presented in fear, and received with ill- 
humour, testified to the irritation of his mind, which 
daily became more exasperated at a kind of 
opposition over which he felt, perhaps for the first 
time, that authority had no power. The report 
was laid before him a second time with no better 
success ; ^ he desired that it should breathe the 
complaisance of submission, but he found merely 
the compliance of gratitude. On more than one 
occasion Eichelieu lost his temper. " At one of the 
conferences which took place on this subject at the 
Cardinal's house, Cerisy, who had been summoned 
to attend, having absented himself on some pretext 
or another, M. Chapelain," says Pelisson, " endea- 

^ " At one place, where it was said that poetry would now be much less 
perfect than it is, but for the disputes which had arisen about the works 
of the most celebrated authors of the last age, such as the ' Jerusalem 
Delivered,' and the ' Pastor Fido,' he wrote on the margin : ' The applause 
and blame of the ' Cid ' lies only between the learned and the ignorant, 
whereas the disputes about the other two pieces occurred between men of 
talent.'" — Pelisson, " Histoire de I'Academie," p. 198. 

^ This report was rejected three times by the Cardinal ; and Chapelain 
was appointed to prepare it for the fourth and last time. 



PIEERE COENEILLE. 185 

voured, as he told me, to make excuses for M. de 
Cerisy as he best could ; but he perceived at once 
that that man would not be contradicted ; for he 
saw him grow angry and put himself into action, 
until, addressing him, he took him and held him for 
some time by the button, just as you do when you 
wish to speak strongly to any one and convince him 
of anything." ^ But bad temper was not sufficient ; 
the Cardinal could no longer say, " I will," and the 
Academy would take no hints. Timid but perse- 
vering reason at length prevailed ; and after five 
months' labour, the " Sentiments of the Academy " 
appeared. "I know perfectly well," says Pelisson, 
" that the Cardinal would have wished them to treat 
the ' Cid ' more harshly, if they had not skilfully 
given him to understand that a judge ought not to 
speak as an interested party, and that, the more 
passion they displayed, the less weight would be 
attached to their authority." ^ 

The public taste, becoming more enlightened by 
the progress of reason and the contemplation of 
great models, gave entire approval neither to the 
censures, nor even to all the praises of the Academy.^ 
In the ideas of a literature which was in entire 

^ Pelisson, " Histoire de rAcaddmie," p. 202. - Ibid. p. 221. 

3 As, for example, the praise bestowed upon this line : — 

'' Ma plus douce esp^rance est de perdre I'espoir," 
which it declared very fine, notwithstanding Scuddry's criticism that " it 
was not far removed from balderdash." Ill-temper enlightened Scud^ry's 
bad taste : the bad taste of the time warped the judgment of the Academy. 



186 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

conformity to the usages and decorum of society, 
it was impossible to learn how to appreciate the 
master-pieces of an art essentially popular — of an art 
which aimed at seeking out, from among the deepest 
and most independent of natural feehngs, precisely 
those sentiments which society teaches us to restrain 
and conceal. Writers accustomed to discuss the 
merits of a sonnet, according to fixed rules, could 
not but feel that all these rules were thrown into 
confusion when applied to the most imperious 
movements of the human heart. Nothing in their 
own literature had revealed to them the truth ; and 
nothing in ancient authors furnished them with 
reliable data by which to judge of that new truth 
which Corneille had imparted to the portraiture of 
modern manners. "Corneille," said Boileau, "has 
invented a new kind of tragedies, unknown to 
Aristotle." ^ " Let us not beHeve," says Fontenelle, 
" that the truth is victorious as soon as it manifests 
itself ; it conquers in the end, but it requires some 
time to subjugate the minds of men." ^ Our minds 
resist the truth even after our feelings have 
acknowledged it ; and the reason always perplexes 
before it elucidates that which the heart understands 
at first sight. The spectators who were most afi'ected 
by the beauties of the " Cid," might have been greatly 

^ Boileau, *' Lettre k Perrault," in vol. v. p. 185 of his works. 
2 Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," in vol. iii. p. 57 of his works. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 187 

embarrassed to account for their feelings ; provided 
that they had their pleasure, they consented willingly 
to suppose that they had not enjoyed it in accordance 
with the rules; but the Academicians, on the contrary, 
had to busy themselves solely about the rules. As 
members of the public they could not refrain from 
admiring things which, in their quality of judges, they 
were perhaps bound to condemn. Though obliged, out 
of respect for propriety, to blame the first scene of the 
fifth act, and to find especial fault with the line — 

" Sors vainqueur d'un combat dont Chimene est le prix ; " 

they could not resist the overpowering force 
both of the sentiment and the expression. "This 
scene," they said, " is characterized by all the 
imperfections it must possess if we consider the 
matter as forming an essential part of this poem ; 
but, on the other hand, considering it apart and 
detached from the subject, the passion which it 
contains seems to us very finely pourtrayed and 
admirably managed, and the expressions are worthy 
of high praise." ' Balzac, who had retired into the 
country, and took no part in the Academy's 
deliberations upon the " Cid," wrote thus to Scudery, 
who had sent him a copy of his " Observations :" 
" Consider, Sir, that all France sides with him (the 
author of the ' Cid'), and that perhaps there is not 
one of the judges whom you have agreed upon, who 



188 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

has not praised that which you desire him to 
condemn ; so that, even if your arguments were 
unanswerable, and your adversary admitted their 
force, he would still have great reason to take 
glorious consolation for the loss of his cause, and to 
tell you that it is far better to have dehghted a 
whole kingdom than to have written a regular 
piece. ''' ■^'"" ^' This being the case. Sir, I do not 
doubt that the gentlemen of the Academy will find 
themselves greatly perplexed in deciding upon your 
suit, and that your reasons will influence their 
minds on the one hand, and public approbation will 
affect them on the other." " The ' Cid,' " said La 
Bruyere, " is one of the finest poems possible to be 
written ; and the criticism of the ' Cid ' is one of the 
best ever written on any subject." ^ 

Independently of the formal approbation bestowed 
on various parts of the work, the Academy admitted 
" that even learned men must grant some indulgence 
to the irregularities of a work which would not have 
had the good fortune to please the community so much, 
if it had not possessed uncommon beauties ; ''^ ''' "^^ 
and that the naturalness and vehemence of its 
passions, the force and delicacy of many of its 
thoughts, and that indescribable charm which min^s 
with all its defects, have gained for it a high rank 
among French poems of the same character." 

^ La Bruyere, " Caracteres," vol. i. p. 113. 



i 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 189 

The "Sentiments" of the Academy were addressed 
to Scudery, as his " Observations " had served as 
their text. Scudery completed the absurdity of 
the whole affair by thanking the Academy. The 
Academy, however, caring httle for his thanks, sent 
him through its Secretary an answer, the substance 
of which was " that its chief intention had been to 
hold the balance fairly, and not to turn a serious 
matter into a mere civility or compliment ; but that, 
next to this intention, its greatest care had been to 
express itself with moderation, and to state its 
reasons without wounding either party ; that it 
rejoiced at the justice he did it by acknowledging it 
to have acted justly ; and that, at some future time, 
it would requite his equity, and whenever it was in 
its power to do him a service, he should have nothing 
to desire from it." ^ 

Scudery perhaps affected an appearance of 
satisfaction ; but Corneille might reasonably think 
he had a right to complain, and Boileau's judgment 
confirmed his opinion.^ While affecting the utmost 
indifference, he complained bitterly, and heaped upon 
the Academy those reproaches which he dared not 
cast upon a more exalted delinquent ; because, he 
said, " it has proceeded against me with so much 

^ Pelmon, " Histoire de rAcad^taie," p. 206, 
2 BoUeau, Satire ix. 233, 234. 

" L'Acad^mie en corps a beau le censurer, 
Le public r^volt^ s'obstiue h Tadmii-er." 



190 LIFE AND WETTINGS OF 

violence, and employed so sovereign an authority to 
shut my mouth." ^ But at the same time, continuing 
his correspondence with the Cardinal through Bois- 
Robert, Corneille received " the Hberalities of His 
Eminence," ^ and acknowledged the wisdom of the 
advice given him by Bois-Robert not to prolong 
this affair, " considering the persons engaged in it," 
although his original intention had been to write an 
answer to the Academy, and dedicate it to the 
Cardinal. " I am," he said, " rather more worldly 
than Heliodorus, who preferred to lose his bishopric 
rather than abandon his book, and I value the good 
graces of my master more than all the reputations 
upon earth." But at the same time that he held 
this language, he dedicated the " Cid" to the 
Duchess* d'Aiguillon, the CardinaFs niece ; ^ and 
spoke of the "universal success" of the piece as 
having surpassed " the most ambitious hopes " of the 
author, and justified " the praises " with which the 
duchess " had honoured it." 

This twofold course of procedure is very puzzling, 
and the mind strives vainly to gain a clear idea of 
the true characters of Richelieu and Corneille, in 
this strange contest. We behold the " Cid " 
established, so to speak, in the family of its 

1 Pelisson, "Histoire de rAcaddmie," p. 208. 
2 His pension, which was paid him by Bois-Robert. 
•'' Then Mme. de Combalet. Voltaire assures us that, but for her, 
Corneille would have been disgraced. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 191 

persecutor ; we shall soon find the author himself 
enjoying the familiarity of that protector who had 
for a moment become his enemy. The dedicatory 
epistle of " Horace," addressed to the Cardinal, 
proves that Corneille read his pieces to him, and this 
precaution perhaps secured his approbation. The 
storm does not appear to have been allayed or 
forgotten ; it would seem never to have burst forth ; 
and here we must place, if we admit its truth, an 
incident in Corneille's life related by Fontenelle, 
which would prove a kindly feeling on the part of 
the Cardinal, by which it is not likely that he would 
have been actuated during the quarrel about the 
" Cid.'^ " Corneille," says Fontenelle, " presented 
himself one day, more melancholy and thoughtful 
than usual, before Cardinal Eichelieu, who a^ked him 
if he were working at anything. He replied that he 
was far from enjoying the tranquilhty necessary for 
composition, as his head was turned upside down 
by love. By and bye, he came to more minute 
explanations, and told the Cardinal that he was 
passionately in love with a daughter of the Lieutenant- 
General of Andely, in Normandy, and that he could 
not obtain her in marriage from her father. The 
Cardinal sent orders for this obstinate father to come 
to Paris ; he quickly arrived in great alarm at so 
unexpected a summons, and returned home well 
satisfied at suffering no worse punishment than 



192 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

giving his daughter to a man who was in such high 
favour/' ^ 

It is certain that Corneille married Marie de 
Lamperiere, daughter of the Lieutenant- General of 
Andely ; and it is also certain that, as Fontenelle 
goes on to relate, a report was spread at Paris, on 
the very night of his marriage, that he had died of 
peripneumony. Some Latin verses, written by Menage 
on the occasion, give us a tolerably accurate clue to 
the date, as he is mentioned therein as the author 
of the "Cid," of "Horace," and of "Cinna/^^ g^ 
singular a circumstance would need to be supported 
by some less doubtful authority than that of 
Fontenelle, who does not even affirm it positively, 
although he had it, as he tells us, from one of the 
family ; ^ yet the very singularity of the anecdote 

^ Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," vol. iii. p. 122, 
" The piece is entitled, " Petri Cornelii Epicedium," and is prefaced in 
these words by Menage : " Scripseram cum falso nunciatum Cornelium, 
quo die uxorem duxerat, ex peripneumonifi, decessisse." The lines which 
indicate the date of the occurrence are the following ; — 
*' Donee Apollineo gaudebit scena cothurno 
Ignes dicentur, pulchra Chimena, tui ; 
Quos male qui carpsit, dicam ; dolor omnia promit ; 

Carminis Iliaci nobile carpat opus. 
Itale, testis eris ; testis qui flumina potas 

Flava Tagi ; nee tu, docte Batave, neges ; 
Omnibus in terris per quos audita Chimena est, 

Jamque ignes vario personat ore suos. 
Nee tu, crudelis Medea, taceberis imquam ; 

Non Graia inferior, non minor Ausonia. 
Vos quoque tergemini, Mavortia pectora, fratres, 
Et te, Cinna ferox, fama loquetur anus." 

^gidii Menagii Poemata, pp. 30 — 32. 
■ At all events he is necessarily mistaken as to the date, as he refers it 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 193 

will not allow us to believe that it was invented by 
the narrator, or that Corneille's family would have 
so completely forgotten the resentment of so powerful 
a protector as Cardinal RicheHeu, unless the Cardinal 
himself had also forgotten it. 

The Hues which Corneille wrote upon the death 
of the Cardinal would even seem to indicate the 
reception of greater benefits than a mere pension, 
while at the same time they make us aware that the 
consciousness of obligation had alone imposed silence 
on the rancorous feeUngs of the poet. 

" Qu'on parle mal ou bien du fameux Cardinal, 
Ma prose ni mes vers n'en diront jamais rien : 
II m'a fait trop de bien pour en dii'e du mal ; 
II m'a fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien." ^ 

' It was natural enough for the poet to remember 
what the minister had forgotten ; and Corneille 
found it difficult to beHeve in the sincerity of a 
reconciKation which on his side was not complete. 
Before the performance of " Les Horaces," he wrote to 

to Corneille 's early youth : " M. Corneille/' he says, " while still very 
young, presented himself," &c. " Cinna " appeared probably towards the 
end of 1639, " Horace " having come out the same year; some time must 
have elapsed since the performance of " Cinna ;" and Corneille could not 
then have been less than thirty-four years old. Perhaps Fontenelle, having 
only a vague impression about this event, thought it more reasonable to 
refer it to the period when Corneille's favour had as yet been overcast by 
no cloud. 

^ Corneille, " CEuvres," vol, x, p. 41. See, in Appendix: B., a letter 
written to Corneille, in December 1642, by the learned Claude Sarrau, 
counsellor to the parliament of Paris, to request him to write a poem to 
the memory of the Cardinal. This letter proves that, at this period at 
least, Corneille's friends were far from considering the Cardinal as his 
enemy. 

o 



194 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

one of his friends : " Horace was condemned by the 
Duumvirs, but acquitted by the people." ^ Armed 
at all points, Corneille firmly awaited the enemy, but 
none appeared ; the outburst of truth had imposed 
silence upon envy, and it dared not hope to renew, 
with equal advantage, a warfare the ridicule attendant 
upon which had been more easily borne by Richelieu 
than by Scudery. The universal cry of admiration 
is all that has reached us. From that time forth, 
for many years, master-pieces followed one another 
in quick succession, without obstacle and almost 
without interruption. We no longer have to look 
for the history of the stage amidst a chaotic heap of 
crude conceptions in which we vainly strive to 
discover a single scintillation of genius or evidence 
of improvement ; these children of darkness still 
venture to show themselves for a brief period after 
the dawn of day ; they may even temporarily 
obtain the support of the wavering taste of a public 
which is capable of admiring tinsel even after having 
done homage to the splendour of pure gold ; but 
such works, henceforward, leave no trace of their 
existence in the history of the art, and yield to the 
productions of genius all that space which they had 
formerly usurped. 

Until the advent of Racine, the history of the 

1 It is not known who was the second enemy whose opposition Corneille 
feared for "Les Horaces;" contemporary documents mention him in 
vague terms, as "a person of great distinction," 



PIERRE CORl^EILLE. 195 

stage is contained in the life of Corneille ; and the 
biography of Corneille is wholly written in his works. 
Though forced for a time to stand forward in defence 
of the " Cid," he withdrew immediately afterwards 
into that personal obscurity which was most con- 
genial to the simpHcity of his manners ; and in the 
monuments of his genius we are alone able to trace 
the efforts which he made to avoid the importunate 
clamours of criticism, which ever lies in ambush on 
the path of a great man, and is constantly on the 
watch to reveal his slightest errors or mistakes. 

" Au " Cid " persecute " Cinna " doit sa naissance," ' 

and already, in " Horace/' Corneille, abandoning that 
imitation for which he had been so virulently 
assailed,^ goes forward trusting to his own powers, 
and confident of his own resources. In the " Cid," 
great scandal had been occasioned by the triumph 
of love — a triumph so long resisted, and so imper- 
fectly achieved ; in " Horace," love will be punished 
for its impotent rebelHon against the most cruel laws of 
honour ; in " Cinna," as if in expiation of Chimene's 
weakness, all other considerations are sacrificed to the 
implacable duty of avenging a father ; and finally, in 
" Polyeucte," duty triumphs in all its loveliness and 
purity, and the sacrifices of Polyeucte, of Pauline, 
and of Severe, do not cost them a single virtue. At 

^ Boileau, " Epitre h. Racine." 
2 See the various pamphlets against the " Cid." 

o 2 



196 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

the same time, the circle of Corneille's ideas becomes 
enlarged ; his style reaches an elevation commensu- 
rate with the loftiness of his thoughts, and becomes 
more chaste, perhaps without any care on his part ; 
his expressions increase in correctness and precision 
under the influence of clearer ideas and more ener- 
getic feelings ; and his genius, henceforth in 
possession of all its resources, advances easily and 
tranquilly in the midst of the highest conceptions. 

Like the " Cid," " Polyeucte " was marked by 
beauties of a character previously unknown, and well 
calculated to astound the regularity of those supreme 
tribunals of good taste and bon ton, which, with the 
code of proprieties in their hand, gave the law to the 
passions and emotions of the soul. It seemed as 
though Christian ideas could not, with any decency, 
be introduced upon a stage of which Paganism had 
taken such complete possession that no one dared to 
utter the name of God except in the plural number. 
Yoiture, who was appointed to convey to Corneille 
the opinion of the Hotel de Rambouillet, at which he 
had read his piece, told him that "its Christianity 
had especially given extreme offence." * A well- 
educated man, brutally interrupting a sacrifice at 
which the governor of the province and the favourite 
of the Emperor were present, could not fail to be 
thought very much at variance with polite usage, at 

1 Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," p. 103. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 197 

the Hotel de Rambouillet, and Bishop Godeau 
condemned the fiirj of Poljeucte, less, probably, 
because he was a Bishop than in his character 
of "a man of honour"^ who was aware of the 
importance of the duty of behaving like the rest of 
the world. Alarmed by this disapprobation, Corneille 
wished to withdraw his piece, and only consented to 
its performance on the entreaty of one of the actors, 
" who did not play in it," says Fontenelle, " because 
he was so bad a performer." ^ 

"Pompee" followed "Polyeucte," and the "Menteur" 
followed " Pompee." Spanish literature shared with 
Corneille the honour of the first French tragedy and 
comedy.^ Genius is evidently as necessary for 
selection and imitation as for invention ; for although 
Spanish literature was open to all the wits of the age, 
Corneille alone was able to derive from it the " Cid '' 
and the " Menteur." It is not by the arrangement 
of its plot, or by the truth of its sentiments, that the 
" Menteur " is distinguished from Corneille's earlier 
comedies. In many of these latter, the rules are as 



^ A man of honour {honnete homme) was then synonymous with a man of 
the world. Saint-Evremond used to say : " To be a man of honour is 
incompatible with good conduct." 

2 This actor was, nevertheless, a man of ability. His name was Hauteroche, 
and he had ^vritten several plays ; viz., " Crispin M^decin," the " Esprit 
Follet," the " Cocher Suppose," and others. 

^ The " Menteur " is an imitation of a Spanish comedy called " La 
Sospechosa Verdad " (the " Suspected Truth "), ascribed by some to Lope 
de Vega, by others to Pedro de Roxas, and by others to Don Juan 
d'Alarcon. 



198 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

carefully observed ; unity of place is more so in the 
" Place Roy ale," and unity of time in the " Suivante ;" 
but the dramatic effect of the "Menteur" arises 
from the portraiture of a real, well-known character, 
and Corneille once more taught the public to enjoy 
the charms of truth. Before the time of Hardy, 
comedy had been gay, but licentious ; after Hardy, 
it was licentious and melancholy : and Corneille, by 
rendering it more pure, may perhaps have made it 
somewhat more sober. Deprived of the unfailing 
resource of the coarse witticisms of valets and the 
scandalous adventures of their masters, comedy had 
sought its means of effect in the whimsical exaggera- 
tion of ridiculous characters ; and Corneille, who, in 
the " Suivante," had depicted, with much wit and 
nicety, the troubles of a shameful coward, afterwards 
condescended, in obedience to the taste of his times, 
to use the extravagant gibberish which constituted 
the humour of the " Matamore.'' Desmarets, though 
carefully preserving this character in his comedy of 
the " Visionnaires,'' had connected with it a host of 
idiots of the same description,^ and their vagaries, 
by their allusions to the current jokes of the day, 
gained his piece the name of the " inimitable 
comedy." It was thought that Desmarets had 
disfigured these characters by falling into error as to 

^ A Philidan, who fancies himself in love ; a Phalante, who imagines 
himself to be rich ; a Melitre, in love with Alexander the Groat ; and so on. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 199 

the kind of comedy that might be derived from 
them. It was felt, however, that the truly comic 
consisted in this, and Corneille was the first to carry 
the idea into action. 

After this attempt, which probably arose from a 
desire felt by Corneille to vanquish his rivals in a 
style of composition in which he had hitherto been 
only their equal, tragedy resumed possession of 
his genius, which had been, so to speak, formed by it 
and for its service ; and, with the exception of the 
sequel to the " Menteur,'^ — a piece which does not 
occupy a prominent position, either in the progress 
or decay of Corneille's dramatic life — we can 
discover, in his works, no beauty which does not 
belong to that style in which he achieved his greatest 
glory.^ That glory had now arrived at its climax. 
"Rodogune" and " Heraclius'^^ still maintained it ; but 

^ " Don Sanche " is entirely in the heroic style. 
'^ It is well known that the subject of this piece is the same as that of 
Calderon's drama, entitled, "En Esta Vida todo es Verdad, y todo 
Mentiza," (" In this life all is truth and all falsehood,") which was per- 
formed in Spain at a time very different from that at which " H^raclius " 
was performed in France, There has been much discussion as to whether 
Corneille or Calderon were the imitator ; but the priority must be ascribed 
to Calderon, according to all the probabilities, including even the absurdity 
of his piece, which will not allow us to suppose that he had a rational model 
beneath his eyes. It is easy to understand why Corneille, who is so exact 
in such matters, does not speak of his borrowings in this case, when we 
consider that he has merely adopted the idea of making Heraclius the son 
of Maurice, and having him brought up with a son of Phocas, so that the 
latter cannot distinguish one from the other ; he has also copied a few 
lines which result from this position : in other respects there is not the 
slightest resemblance in the plot, or in the events of the proscenium which 
Corneille has taken no pains to render in agreement with history. It 



200 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

between these two pieces, " Theodore " appears, and 
we are thunderstruck by so great a fall after so 
sudden and prodigious an elevation. His position 
will, however, be retrieved by two vigorous pro- 
ductions ; after " Andromede," in favour of which 
I shall not count the success which it obtained by 
the novelty of its style and the marvels of its 
machinery,* came "Don Sanche d'Aragon," and 
notwithstanding that " refusal of an illustrious 
suffrage," ^ which, in Corneille's opinion, was fatal to 

might be supposed that Corneille knew nothing of Calderon's piece, except 
from some extract sent into France at the time of the performance, from 
which he might have derived the idea of the leading feature of the plot, 
and a few distinctive lines of the dialogue. In support of this supposition, 
it is said that Calderon's piece was not printed until after 1645, the time of 
the performance of " Heraclius." See p. 35 of the advertisement to the 
edition of Corneille's works published in 1758. 

^ This " ravishing piece," to use the expressions of the newspapers of the 
time (see the "Gazette de France" for 1650), was, nevertheless, not the 
first French drama, into which music and machinery were introduced, 
which had been performed on the Parisian stage. Hardy had introduced 
choruses into some of his tragedies, and machinery into his pastorals, and 
it appears that all these accessories were combined in the "Mariage 
d'Orph^e et d'Eurydice, ou la grande Journ^e des Machines," performed 
in 1640, ten years before the representation of " Andromede." Besides the 
difference in merit between the two pieces (although Corneille's was bad 
enough), there was certainly a great difference between the expense 
incurred, for the performance of " Orphee," by the comedians of the 
Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne, and that incurred by the Court, for 
whom " Andromede " had been composed, and in whose presence it was 
first performed. Particular notice was taken of a great star of Venus, in 
which that goddess descended upon the stage, and the brilliancy of which 
illuminated the entire theatre. It appears that plays of this kind gave 
great alarm at first to the devout ; but their scruples were so very soon 
dissipated that, as the •'* Gazette de France " informs us, " the most 
considerable persons of this city no sooner saw the field opened to so 
innocent a diversion, than there were few, of all conditions, both eccle- 
siastical and secular, who did not desire to enjoy it." 

* The approbation of the Great Conde. This piece, as it appears. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 201 

the success of this drama, we feel again, when 
reading it, some of those proud emotions which are 
kindled in the soul by the magnificent poetry of the 
" Cid." ^ " Nicomede," more imposing and more 
original, " is, perhaps," says Voltaire, " one of the 
strongest proofs of Corneille's genius." Never, 
indeed, has Corneille thrown so sustained and 
pathetic an interest into the mere portraiture of a 
great character, without any aid from external 
circumstances ; and never has he so strikingly 
manifested the power of a spring of action which 
he has better employed elsewhere. The failure of 
" Pertharite " was the first blow given to that respect 
with which the public were inspired by the great name 

succeeded at first ; and Corneille attributes the coolness wMch followed 
its early success to the distaste which the prince manifested to " Don 
Sanche." " Corneille should have remembered," says Voltaire, "that the 
distaste and criticisms of Cardinal Richelieu, a man of more weight in 
literature than the great Conde, had not been able to injure the * Cid.' " 
The failure of " Don Sanche " must, probably, be ascribed to its great 
deficiency in interest, which was at first unperceived through the splendour 
of the principal personage of the drama. The same cause was afterwards 
injurious to the success of " Nicomede." 

^ Although " Don Sanche " is nothing more than a heroic comedy, the 
beauties which are discernible in it, though its composition is cold and its 
plot undignified, are not unworthy of tragedy, at least of that chivalrous 
tragedy, which, being generally less imposing than the other kind in the 
magnitude of the interests involved, is sustained only by the loftiness of its 
characters. Carlos, the hero of the piece, loves the queen and is beloved 
by her ; but his birth does not permit him to aspire to her hand. The 
queen is anxious that he should at least decide her fate, and choose for her 
between three suitors who have asked her in marriage. She gives him the 
ring which is to be the mark of her choice. Carlos, despising the rage of 
the suitors, who are indignant at the power entrusted to him, declares that 
he will relinquish the ring in favour only of the most worthy :— 

" Et je le garde. * * * A qui, Carlos ? — A men vainqueur." 



202 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

of Corneille, and which had even saved '*' Theodore " 
from failure.^ But even Corneille no longer defended 
himself ; in " Pertharite/' no beauty concealed the 
defects of an incomplete and somewhat factitious 
system, the riches of which Corneille alone had 
been able to utilise and parade with sufficient 
magnificence to disguise its imperfections. 

We have seen Corneille raise himself, so to speak, 
by a single bound to that proud elevation at which he 
towered above his age ; we behold him falling back 
again below the standard of taste and enlightenment 
for which his age was indebted to his labours and 
example. Now that his mission is finished, and he has 
impressed upon the drama a movement with which he 
is no longer able to keep pace, I wish to discover and 
describe with precision the true character of this 
movement, communicated by a man of genius to 
men of genius as powerful as his own ; and the 
peculiar nature of that genius, which, after having 
raised its art and its audience to an equal elevation, 
was unable to keep its place in the region to which 
it had carried them. How came it that Corneille, 
the father of our drama, was not also its lawgiver 1 
What were the causes which, after having made 

^ " Theodore " was not an entire failure. " The performance of this 
tragedy was not very successful," says Corneille, in his Examination of 
" Theodore ; " but when speaking of " Pertharite," he thus writes : — " The 
success of this tragedy was so unfortunate that, to spare myself the pain 
of remembering it, I shall say almost nothing about it." See his 
Examination of " Pertharite." 



I 



PIEREE COEI^EILLE. 203 

him SO great, prevented him from becoming greater 
still ? 

If Corneille accomplished the revolution which re- 
generated our drama, or rather, if he exercised that 
creative action which liberated our drama from its 
primitive chaos, it was because he introduced into his 
writings truth, which was then banished from all 
poetical compositions. That energy, that imposing 
majesty, those sublime soarings of genius, all those 
qualities which gained Corneille the title of " The 
Great," are personal merits which have immortahsed 
the name of the poet, without preserving after him 
any dominant influence over dramatic art. Tragedy 
might be beautiful otherwise than as Corneille con- 
ceived it, and Corneille has remained great without 
preventing other great men from taking a place 
beside him. But tragedy could gain life only by 
repairing to that fountain of truth which Corneille 
was the first to discover. Before his appearance 
every day seemed to remove the public and the 
poets farther from it ; and every day buried the 
treasures of the human heart more deeply beneath 
the fantastic inventions of false wit and a disordered 
imagination. Corneille was the first to reveal these 
treasures to dramatic art, and to teach it how to use 
them. On this ground he is rightfully regarded 
as fhe father, and the " Cid '' as the origin, of French 
tragedy. 



204 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

But was Corneille's reason, though sufficiently 
strong to pierce through the dark clouds of error, 
strong enough to dissipate them entirely 1 Sure of 
always overcoming the enemy whom he attacked, 
was he always sufficiently enlightened to recognise 
his real enemy '? and did not his character too 
frequently render him subservient to an age over 
which his genius had made him so superior 1 

It is impossible to imagine what Corneille's genius 
would have become, and to divine either the extraordi- 
nary beauties which it might have unfolded, or the 
flights of which it might have been guilty, if he had 
boldly abandoned himself to his own guidance. As 
regarded his own personal knowledge, Corneille was in 
almost the same position as Shakspeare and Calderon ; 
but his age and country were more civilised than theirs, 
and criticism availed itself, for the instruction of the 
poet, of all the acquirements of his age and country. 
Corneille feared and braved criticism, and provoked 
it by his defiance ; he would allow none of its 
censures, but he did all he could to avoid them. 
Taking warning by a first attack, he no longer ven- 
tured to hazard, for fear of Scudery, all that France 
would probably have applauded. Incapable of 
yielding to his adversaries, and angry at being 
obliged to combat them, he withdrew from the path 
in which he was likely to meet with them ; tind 
though this perhaps involuntary prudence saved him 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 205 

from some dangerous quicksands, it undoubtedly 
deprived him of some precious discoveries. The 
success of the " Cid " did not efface, in his mind, the 
censure of the Academy ; in that drama, he had 
allowed himself to depict, with irresistible truth, the 
transports of passion ; but when he found Chimene's 
love so severely condemned, Corneille, doubtless 
alarmed at what he might find in the weakness of 
the heart, looked in future only to its strength ; he 
sought for the resisting element in man, and not for 
the yielding element, and thus became acquainted 
with only the half of man. And as admiration is 
the feehng chiefly excited by heroic resistance, it 
was to admiration that the dramatic genius of 
Corneille principally addressed itself 

Boileau did not consider admiration to be one of 
the tragic passions. " Corneille," he says, " has not 
aimed, like the poets of ancient tragedy, at moving 
his audience to pity or terror, but at exciting in their 
souls, by the sublimity of his ideas and the beauty of 
his sentiments, a certain admiration which many 
persons, and young persons especially, frequently 
like far better than real tragic passions." ^ Like 
Boileau, Voltaire and his school are of opinion 
that admiration is a cold feeling, very unsuited to 
dramatic effect. I reject this idea, not only because 
it deprives the drama of one of its noblest springs 

^ Boileau, " Lettre h Perrault sur les ancieus et les modernes." 



200 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

of action, but because it attacks the true principles 
of art. 

It is one of the errors of our literary metaphysics 
to seek the source of the pleasure which we derive 
from the drama, and particularly from tragedy, in 
our own personal recollections, and in a return upon 
ourselves and our individual affections. According 
to this principle, it has been thought that the feelings 
most familiar to man, those which his position 
enables him most frequently to experience, are also 
those which it is most suitable to present to his 
attention. This principle received great confirmation 
from the authority of Boileau, when, in spite of all 
that the ancients have written, and in reliance upon 
an experience which was not his own, he preferred 
love to all other tragic passions ; ^ this principle was 
sustained by the brilliant genius of Voltaire and the 
pathetic effects which he educed from the passions 
most familiar to the human heart ; this same principle, 
in fine, other writers, led astray by the opinion of 
that great man, and, as they believed, by his example 
also, have carried out to consequences which Voltaire 
himself disavowed. They have imagined that heroic 
tragedy, the adventures of kings and princes, the 
great vicissitudes of fortune, being too far remote 
from us and the dangers to which we may be exposed, 

^ " De cette passion la sensible peinture, 

Est pour aller au cceur la route la plus siire." 



PIERKE CORNEILLE. 207 

can affect us only slightly ; and they have invented 
the tragedy of common Hfe, in which every man may 
recognise his own household and its accessories, with 
what happened to him on the previous da.j, and what 
will happen to him on the morrow, and may thus 
tremble, on his own account, at the dangers incurred 
by persons who bear so striking a resemblance to 
himself. If the principle were just, these writers 
would be right ; and if the emotion which most 
thoroughly overcomes us be the greatest pleasure that 
the stage can afford, they have certainly discovered, 
as regards many persons, the secret by which this 
pleasure may be suppHed. 

But there is another source of pleasure to which 
the arts should repair ; a pleasure the more desirable, 
because it is more complete and prolonged, because 
it develops and perfects the faculty which it 
calls into play, whereas violent emotions deaden and 
obliterate it. Our faculties have been given to us for 
our use ; and the pleasure connected with the exer- 
cise of each one of them renders its use agreeable 
to us, and holds them all in readiness to subserve our 
various wants. As these wants are seldom sufficient to 
give them full employment, and to develop all their 
energy, these same faculties incessantly demand of us 
suitable opportunities for bringing them into action ; 
and, in the repose in which they are left by the 
tranquillity of our life, they seek to exercise them- 



208 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

selves upon objects in conformity to their nature, 
although foreign to the immediately useful end which 
it is not always incumbent upon them to attain. 
Thus the mind, not finding means for constant 
employment in attention to our own interests, yields 
itself to purely speculative combinations, which have 
no connection with our individual position ; and this 
exercise of the soul, being devoid of all reference to 
ourselves, is one of the liveliest pleasures that man 
can experience. With the emotions produced by our 
personal interests are mingled incitements of desire, 
fear, and hope, destined to stimulate us to action, 
which would become intolerable in a position with 
which we had nothing to do, and would absolutely 
destroy that lively but tranquil pleasure which 
we hope to find in the enjoyment of the arts. Far, 
therefore, from bringing us back to our own personal 
interests and recollections, and to our own individual 
position, the effect of the drama ought to be to divert 
our minds entirely therefrom ; far from concentrating 
our attention upon the narrow circle of our real 
existence, it should, on the contrary, make us lose 
sight of it in order to transport us into our possible 
existence, and occupy us not with what really occurs 
to us, but with what we may be — not with the par- 
ticular circumstances which have called our faculties 
into operation, but with those faculties themselves, as 
they may be displayed when everything stimulates, 



PIERRE CORt^EILLE. 209 

and nothing checks, their development. Our enjoy- 
ment is then derived from ourselves, and we revel 
in the exalted feeling of our existence, of that state 
in which, as Mme. de Lafayette used to say, " to be 
happy, it is only necessary to exist ; " and this 
happiness is so thoroughly the result of the move- 
'ment imparted to our soul, independently of the 
object by which it is occasioned, that any idea of 
reaHty, connected with that object, would destroy our 
pleasure, and change it into an entirely different 
feeling. If the illusion could carry us so far away as 
to make us believe that we really saw, in Hippolyte, 
that which the drama presents to us as a fiction, 
namely, a virtuous young man, the victim of a most 
infamous calumny, could we take delight in such a 
spectacle ? Would it not inspire us, on the con- 
trary, with the bitterest emotion and the most cruel 
anguish ? Should we take pleasure in beholding 
Cleopatra actually planning, in our presence, the 
death of her two sons ? Horror-stricken, we should 
turn away our eyes from such a monster. When the7 
haughty Nicomede, bound in chains by cowards, and 
delivered over to that Flaminius whom he has 
degraded in our eyes by his contempt, is sent captive 
to Rome, which he had so boldly defied, — when, 
rising superior to this humiliating reverse of fortune, 
he exclaims: — 1 

" J'irai, j'irai, Seigneur, vous le voulez ainsi ; 
Et j'y serai plus roi que vous n'etes ici," 



210 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

if we could believe in the truth of what the poet 
represents to us, would not the pleasure which is 
occasioned us by the magnanimitj of the hero be 
stifled, or at least diminished, by the anger which we 
should feel at his unworthy position 1 But we believe 
nothing ; we content ourselves with feeling, without 
mingling anything with that impression which is 
sufiicient to absorb our whole soul, and repel all 
extraneous ideas. 

Just as, in bodily exercises, any insignificant 
object that may be presented to our aim, concentrates 
our entire attention upon the mere development of 
our physical powers ; so, in these mental games, 
which are solely intended to promote the exercise 
of our moral faculties, we engage with that vigorous 
satisfaction which springs from greater energy of 
existence. If a httle pain be mingled with this 
satisfaction, the evil of suffering is then, nevertheless, 
no more contained in the movement which animates 
us, than the pleasure of feeling ; and this evil does 
not resume its true nature unless too acute a pain 
warn us of the presence of an enemy — unless an 
innocent conflict be changed into a dangerous 
combat, and disturb us with a consciousness of 
our weakness, instead of occupying us with the 
employment of our strength. 

It is not, therefore, the confoTmity of the scene to 
our own particular destiny and personal feehngs, 



PIEKKE CORis^EILLE. 211 

which constitutes the true merit of tragedy ; it 
consists far more in its conformity to human destiny 
in general, and to our intellectual and sensible nature 
— in its agreement, not with the feelings with which 
we are best acquainted, but with those which we 
are most capable of experiencing. Tragedy may 
demand of man all that his heart contains ; it may 
excite tears of pity, the shudder of terror, the 
impetuosity of courage, the emotions of love, 
indignation against vice, maternal affection, fihal 
piety ; all that has been given us, for our 
preservation or our morality, bears to dramatic art 
the tribute of that superabundant force which, during 
the course of a tranquil life, we so seldom find 
opportunity completely to employ. 

Among these feelings there is one which is the 
perfection of our nature, the last degree of soul 
enjoyment, of an enjoyment which is the dehghtfiil 
proof of its noble origin and its glorious destiny. 
This feeling is admiration, the sentiment of the 
beautiful, the love of all that is great, enthusiasm for 
all that is virtuous ; it awakens us to emotion at the 
aspect of a master-piece, excites us at the narrative 
of a noble action, and intoxicates us with the mere 
idea of a virtue which is eternally separated from us 
by an interval of three thousand years. Will such a 
feeling allow the drama to be cold, and the spectator 
to be passionless ? Will that be too calm a movement 

f 2 



212 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

for tragedy which, hurrying the whole soul beyond 
itself, snatching it, so to speak, from earth and the 
bonds which chain it thereto, transports it, as with a 
single bound, to the loftiest regions within reach of 
its attainment 1 Put the question to any man 
who has just experienced this sublime feeling, to 
any man who has just heard the Quil mourut ! 
of old Horace thundered forth in all its energy. 
" We are," says Raymond de Saint-Marc, *' at once 
surprised and enchanted to find ourselves so brave ; 
and it is certain that, if we were placed in the position 
of the elder Horace, and found ourselves animated for 
a moment by the same greatness of soul as inspired 
him, we could not prevent ourselves from feeling 
tacitly proud of a courage which we have not had 
the happiness to possess before." No ! we are not 
surprised ; we are not proud ; we feel no return upon 
ourselves and our habitual existence ; we live the 
new life into which the poet has transported us ; 
but this life becomes our own, and we feel it grow 
more animated because it has found within us 
faculties capable of more powerful development. It 
is not the grandeur or the virtue of old Horace 
which elevates us ; it is our own grandeur, our own 
virtue ; it is that feeling which, in real life, finding 
itself too often crushed beneath the weight of interest 
or of circumstances, here plays at will in the open 
fields of the imagination, and attains, without effort, 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 213 

that exaltation which is the last degree of happiness 
placed within our power to experience. Intoxicated 
with delight, we then bring the emotion which 
animates us to bear upon all surrounding objects ; 
and there is not perhaps a single man capable of fully 
appreciating the sublime beauties of Corneille, who 
has not felt this on witnessing the performance of 
his dramas. At the height to which he raises us, 
no low idea is able to reach us, no expression appears 
trivial in our eyes ; transported by the enthusiasm of 
Polyeucte even to an idea of the presence of God, 
imbued with a sense of His greatness and of the 
danger of His wrath, we are conscious of no 
impropriety in the line : — 

*' Tout beau, Pauline ; il enteud vos paroles." 

This expression, which would be undignified even in 
a familiar conversation, loses its vulgarity in a 
sublime dialogue ; divested of its personal character, 
it is nothing more than the symbol of an idea 
which kindles our emotion — the strong and natural 
expression of a deep feeling ; and so long as it 
conveys this powerfully to us, all other considerations 
are set aside. After the admirable scene between 
Horace and Curiace when about to engage in 
deadly conflict, after that simple development of 
the highest sentiments that can be inspired by 
the most extraordinary position, Camille and 



214 LIFE AND WETTINGS OF 

Sabine stop the two warriors without shaking their 
resolution ; they afSict them by their powerless 
effort, and only delay a scene which they cannot 
prevent. Upon this, old Horace comes up, and 
exclaims : — 

" Qu'est ceci, mes enfants ? ecoutez-vous vos flammes ? 
Et perdez-vous encor le temps avec des femmes ? " 

We know that a combat is in prospect, that it must 
take place ; we almost feel conscious of the necessity 
of coming at once to this inevitable event ; and it is 
old Horace who, with the imposing authority and 
courageous reason of a father, steps in to determine 
the fatal moment ; and this moment is invested with 
such grandeur, that, in whatever manner he may 
announce its advent, it cannot detract from its 
inherent greatness, 
r" But this emotion, excited in our breasts by beauties 
of so lofty a nature, sometimes disguises real defects 
which, after a calmer examination, it is impossible 
not to perceive. Nicomede makes us tolerate 
Prusias, and even the boastfulness of that singular 
personage is merged in the lofty feelings awakened 
/in us by his courage. In the midst of the heat of 
admiration maintained in our souls by Polyeucte, 
Severe, and Pauline, the baseness of Felix is only a 
slight cloud which disappears before it can cast a 
chill over us ; and all the declamations of Cornelia 
could not suddenly arrest the movement excited by 



PIEKRE CORNEILLE. 215 

the beauty of her grief, and by that remarkable 
entrance : 

" Cesar, prends garde a toi ! " 

If the personage ceases to sustain our interest, our 
affection hastens to defend the poet against our judg- 
ment : part of the admiration with which we are 
inspired by the heroes of Corneille, has fastened upon 
Corneille himself; his name alone moves us by 
powerful recollections ; and a sort of passion surrounds 
him with a veil of respect and love which reason 
itself feels great repugnance to pierce. This passion 
long warred in his favour against the glory of 
Racine ; it seemed as though men feared to divert 
their minds from that kind of impressions with 
which Corneille had filled their souls ; and the long 
injustice of his partisans, who felt wounded because a 
new enjoyment had ventured to disturb " those old 
admirations" in which they loved to indulge, has 
proved that admiration is one of those feelings which 
men consent least willingly to abandon even in the 
smallest degree. 

It is also the feeling which occasions least weari- 
ness ; as we receive it without effort, we experience 
it without fatigue ; a prolonged succession of pathetic 
scenes will make us feel the necessity of repose far 
sooner than a series of lofty pictures, each of which, 
by raising our soul to a higher elevation, renders us 
more worthy of that which is to follow. But actions ' 



216 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

capable of exciting our admiration are, by their very 
nature, ill adapted to furnish very lengthy dramatic 
scenes ; they usually consist in the triumph of power 
over the obstacles which oppose personal interest, 
passions, or inclinations, in the performance of an 
important duty, or the accomplishment of a great 
design. Now, power gives a single blow, and over- 
throws its enemy ; the resistance of this enemy can 
alone produpe the movement necessary to the duration 
of the action. More conflicts of passion, and a httle 
more weakness, would have rendered Corneille's 
heroes more constantly true and dramatic ; even 
their virtue, which may often be regarded as the prin- 
cipal personage in the piece, would have interested 
us more, if, though equally able to conquer, it had 
been attacked by more potent foes, and had visibly 

Lincurred greater dangers. All the vigour of his 
noble genius was requisite to discover a sufficient 
source of interest in those singular characters which 
he alone could create and sustain ; he alone has 
succeeded in awakening our uncertainty and curiosity 
by their very inflexibility, which, as it is announced 
at the outset, does not permit them to yield to the 
slightest weakness, and multiplies successively around 
them embarrassments which ceaselessly necessitate 

^•^greater and more extraordinary efibrts. If we were 
less convinced of Emilie's firmness, we should feel 
less alarmed on her account, at the resolution of 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 217 

Oinna to die if she will not permit him to break up 
the conspiracy. In such a struggle, an ordinary 
character should succumb, and it only remains to be 
seen whether it will sacrifice its love or its vengeance ; 
but we well know that Emilie will renounce neither 
the one nor the other. What course, then, will she 
pursue ? She hesitates ; not as to her choice, but 
as to her means ; what shall it be ? What but 
this : — 

" * * • * Qu'il acheve et ddgage sa foi, 
Et qu'il choisisse apres de la mort ou de moi." 

In order to attain to this invincible power, which 
will make all around it bend to its influence, a man 
must absolutely have separated himself from all that 
otherwise enters into the composition of human 
nature ; he must have completely ceased to think 
of all that, in real life, occurs to alter the forms of 
that ideal grandeur of which the imagination can 
conceive no possibility except when, isolating it, so 
to speak, from all the other affections, it forgets that 
which renders its realisation so difficult and so in- 
frequent. The imagination of Corneille had no 
difficulty in lending itself to this isolation ; the lofti- 
ness of his inventions was sustained by his inex- 
perience in the common affairs of life ; as he 
introduced into his own ordinary actions none of 
those ideas which he employed in the creation of 
his heroes, so in the conception of his heroes he 



218 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

introduced none of the ideas of which he made use 
in ordinary Kfe. He did not place Corneille him- 
self in their position : the observation of nature 
did not occupy his attention ; a happy inspira- 
tion frequently led him to divine it ; but his 

tunassisted imagination, gathering together outhnes 
of a far more simple character, composed for 
him a sort of abstract model of a single quality, a 
being without parts, if I may be allowed the 
expression, capable of being set in motion by 
a single impulse, and of proceeding in a single 

/ direction. 

Thus had he formed for himself an absolute idea 
of force of soul, whether it be exerted for crime or 
virtue, of patriotism and even of baseness, which, in 
the Felix of "Polyeucte," and the Yalens of 
" Theodore," is no more embarrassed by scruples 
of honour than the courage of Nicomede is checked 
by a prudential reflection, or the patriotism of 
Horace influenced by a movement of sensibiHty. 
Thus, also, in another kind of composition, the great 
things of the world present themselves to Corneille 
under an abstract form, which he does not ven- 
ture to analyse, and give to the man who possesses 
them, a separate existence, with which the exist- 
ence which he shares in common with the rest of 
mankind has nothing whatever to do. Corneille 
has formed all his characters in conformity with 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 219 

the principle expressed in the following lines from 
'• Nicomede ": — 

PKUSIAS. 

** Je veux mettre d'accord 1' amour et la nature, 
Etre pere et mari dans cette conjoncture. 

NICOMEDE. 

Seigneur, voulez-vous bien vous en fier h, moi I 
Ne soyez I'un ni I'autre. 

PRUSIAS. 

Et que dois-je ^tre ? 
NICOMEDE. 

Roi. 
Reprenez hautement ce noble caractere ; 
Un veritable roi n'est ni mari ni pere, 
II regarde son trone, et rien de plus. R^gnez." 

Corneille's kings, with the exception of Prusias, do 
nothing but reign, are incapable of anything that is 
not directly connected with their royal office, and 
seem to be born for no other purpose than royalty : — 

" Celles de ma naissance ont horreur des bassesses ; 
Leur sang tout genereux craint les molles adresses," 

says Rodogune. When Charmion, in " La Mort de 
Pompee," say^s to Cleopatra : 

" L'amour certes sur vous a bien peu de puissance," 

she answers at once — 

" Les princes ont cela de leur haute naissance." 

At the height at which the poet considers princes, he 
is able to distinguish them only by the splendour 



220 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

which surrounds them ; he confounds this splendour 
wdth their nature ; and without supposing them to 
possess any other than that which belongs to their 
rank, he goes so far as to regulate the virtues 
according to the order of ranks, and to regard them 
as attributes which a man assumes, together with 
the costume of a new position in society. RodeHnde, 
in '•' Pertharite," founds some very serious reasoning 
upon the fact that — 

" Autre est Tame d'un comte, autre est celle d'un roi." 

The plot of " Agesilas " turns upon the whim of 
Aglatide, who wishes to marry a king instead of a 
sovereign prince who is not a king ; and when we 
find Attila saying to the monarchs whom he is proud 
to hold beneath his yoke, 

" Et vous, rois, suivea-moi ; " 

we can hardly suppress a smile at this child's play of 
the imagination of a great man. 

Grenerally speaking, this imagination is so exclu- 
sively struck by the character or special position 
which occupies its notice, that it does not allow^ 
Corneille to pay sufficient attention to those ideas 
which, by their natural connection with that position 
or character, would be necessary to render its 
delineation complete and faithful. Hence arises the 
singularity of certain subjects which he selected 
without the slightest solicitude about the odious or 



PIERRE CORXEILLE. 221 

ridiculous aspect under which they id ay appear. 
Without depicting to himself any of the ideas 
associated with the strange subject of" Theodore," he 
beheld and represented that virgin martyr led into 
an infamous place to be handed over to the populace 
and the soldiery ; and in his examination of this 
drama, he expresses some astonishment at that severity 
which would not tolerate, upon the stage, " a story 
which constitutes the chief ornament of the second 
book of the ' Virgins ' of Saint Ambrose. What would 
have been said," he adds, " if, like that great doctor 
of the Church, I had represented that virgin in 
the infamous place, if I had described the various 
agitations of her soul while there, and if I had 
depicted the uneasiness which she felt when she first 
beheld the entrance of Didyme 1 '' If Corneille had 
had the least suspicion of the feehngs awakened by 
these words, he would have abandoned the idea of 
describing a situation, the dishonour of which is its 
slightest punishment ; but he saw in it merely the 
general idea of dishonour, stripped of all the revolting 
ideas which accompany such a kind of infamy ; and 
his Theodore, as if she were nothing but conscience, 
and were threatened only with the misfortune of 
committing a bad action, declares, with the utmost 
tranquilHty, that — 

" Dieu tout juste et tout bon, qui lit dans nos pensees, 
N'impute pas de crime aux actions forcdes." 



222 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

She is equally resigned to the thought of de- 
voting — 

" Son corps a rinfamie, et sa main a I'encens," 

provided that she be able to retain 

" * * * D'une time resolue, 

A I'epoux sans macule une epouse impollue." 

Neither the poet nor the virgin seem to have the 
slightest notion that a modest and chaste girl has, 
in such a case, something more to think of than the 
state of her soul in the eyes of God, and of her honour 
in the eyes of men. 

Thus it is that Corneille could never describe a 
mixed feeling, composed of two opposite feelings, 
without leaning too much sometimes on one side, 
and sometimes on the other. In the early acts 
Cinna execrates Augustus, and in the latter he 
adores him.^ At first, the poet saw only his hatred, 
now he sees only his affection ; each of these feel- 
ings, taken separately, is entire and absolute, as 
though they were never intended to co-exist in the 
same heart, and consequently to have some weak 
point at which it would be possible to pass from one 
to the other. Pauline, when her father proposed to 
her to see Severe once more, exclaimed : 

"Moi ! moi ! que je revoie un si puissant vainqueur, 
Et m'expose a des yeux qui me percent le coeur ! " 



^ " Vous me faites hair ce que mon ame adore." 

" Cinna," act iii. scene 4. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 223 

This is indeed the cry of love in all its ardour — the 
affright of a heart torn with its wounds, and which 
has gained over its weakness only the advantage of 
learning to fear it. We do not perceive that 
Pauline's fondness for her husband has as yet 
succeeded in allaying her fears ; and yet, when the 
danger of Polyeucte stimulates her to employ all 
means to save him, no expression of love is too 
strong for her to use, and she exclaims : 

" N"e desespere pas uue ame qui t'adore." 

In the same manner, Chimene demands of the King, 
with excessive vehemence, the death of that same 
Rodrigue upon whom, in the next scene, she will 
lavish the strongest protestations of love ; and 
although '' Polyeucte " and the " Cid " are the pieces 
in which Corneille has most ably mingled the various 
affections of the heart, it is very clear that in the 
division which he makes between love and duty, 
when he sets himself to delineate one of these 
feelings, he cannot help falling into too complete 
forgetfulness of the other. 

This tendency is even more strikingly manifested 
in a poem which Corneille wrote on the Conquest of 
Holland. While busied in celebrating the victories 
of Louis XI y. and the success attendant upon his 
arms, he suddenly turns his thoughts to the 
conquered nation, the weakness of their defence, the 



224 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

motives which must have animated them, and the 
cowardice which led them to prove traitors to 
themselves ; and, in a transport of Dutch republican 
feeling, he exclaims : — 

" Mis^rables ! quels lieux cacheront vos miseres, 
Ou vous ne trouviez pas les ombres de vos peres, 
Qui, morts pour la patrie et pour la liberte, 
Feront un long reproche a votre lachet^ 1 
Cette noble vaieur autrefois si connue, 
Cette digne fierte, qu'est-elle devenue ? 
Quand, sur terre et sur mer, vos combats obstin^s 
Brisoient les rudes fers h, vos mains destines, 
Quand vos braves Nassau, quand Guillaume et Maurice, 
Qiiand Henri vous guidoient dans cette illustre lice, 
Quand du sceptre Danois vous paroissiez I'appui, 
N'aviez-vous que les coeurs, que les bras d'aujourd'hui? " 

Corneille seems to have forgotten that, not long 
before, in an address to Louis XIY., in which he 
spoke of resistance as a crime, he had said of these 
same Hollanders : — 

" C'est ce jaloux ingrat, cet insolent Batave, 
Qui te doit ce qu'il est, et hautement te brave ; " 

and exhorted the King to avenge upon them 

" L'honneur du sceptre et les droits de la foi," 

witTi as much energy as he now expresses his 
indignation at their not having better defended their 
" liberty and fatherland/' 

To the same cause also must be ascribed the 
variableness of Corneille's maxims, though they are 
always expressed with the most absolute confidence ; 
and in this way we must explain- how it is that his 



) 



PIERRE CORN^EILLE. 225 

morality is sometimes so severe and sometimes so 
lax — that he sometimes enunciates principles of the 
sternest republicanism/ and sometimes of the most 
servile obedience.^ The fact is, that whether 
Corneille be contemplating the republican or the 
subject of a king — the hero or the politician — he 
abandons himself without reserve to the system, the 
position, or the character which he is describing, and 
carefully avoids all reference to general ideas that 
might come into conflict with the particular ideas 
which he is desirous of bringing upon the stage, and 
which vary according to the personages of the 
drama. This unreserved adoption of a special 
principle, changing with the circumstances of the 
piece, gained Corneille credit for great skill in 
representing the local colour and genius of different 
peoples and states; whilst this merit was denied 
to Racine, whose descriptions, being of a more 
general nature, seem too famihar to our eyes to 

See all the speeches of Emilie in the fourth scene of the third act of 
" Cinna." 

Horace asserts that when a king declares his subject to be guilty — 
" C'est crime qu'envers lui se vouloir excuser. 
Notre sang est son bien, il en peut disposer ; 
Et c'est k nous de croire, alors qu'il en dispose, 
Qu'il ne s'en prive point sans une juste cause," 

Livie says to Emilie, when speaking of the monarch : — 

" Nous lui devons nos biens, nos jours sont en sa main." 
And that same Emilie, who was a moment before so stanch a republican, 
expresses her entire concurrence in this sentiment, and says : — 
" Aussi, dans le discours que vous venez d'entendre, 
Je parlois pour I'aigrir, et non pour me d^fendre." 

Q 



226 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

belong, by any possibility, to other times than our 
own. Racine's heroes were recognised at once, 
and claimed as Frenchmen ; but the singular 
physiognomy of Corneille's heroes enabled them to 
pass easily for Greeks or Romans. " Being once," 
says Segrais, " near Corneille, on the stage, at a 
performance of ' Bajazet,' he said to me : * I should 
not venture to say so to others than yourself, because 
it would be said that I spoke from jealousy ; but 
observe, there is not a single personage in ' Bajazet ' 
who is animated by the feelings which ought to 
animate him, and which really are entertained at 
Constantinople ; all of them, beneath their Turkish 
dress, are actuated by the feelings prevalent in the 
midst of France.' And he was right,'' adds Segrais; 
" in Corneille's dramas, the Roman speaks like a 
Roman, the Greek like a Greek, the Indian like an 
Indian, and the Spaniard like a Spaniard." ^ 

" Corneille," says Saint-Evremond, " makes his 
Greeks speak better than the Greeks of old ever 
spoke, his Romans than the ancient Romans, and 
his Carthaginians than the citizens of Carthage 
themselves. Corneille is almost the only man who 
possesses the good taste of antiquity." ^ " The 
Romans," says La Bruyere, " are greater and more 
Roman in his verses than in their actual history." ^ 

^ " Segraisiana," pp. 63 — 65. 

2 Saint-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. iii. p. 41. 

3 La Bruyere, " Caracteres," vol. ii. p. 84. 



\ 



I 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 237 

And finally, Balzac wrote thus to Corneille, in 
reference to Rome : — " You are the true and 
faithful interpreter of its spirit and courage. I say 
more, sir, you are often its pedagogue, and remind it 
of propriety when it seems to have forgotten its 
decorum. You are the reformer of the old time, if 
it needs any embellishment or support. In those 
places where Rome is built of brick, you rebuild it of 
marble ; where you find a void, you fill it with a 
masterpiece ; and I have always observed that what 
you lend to history is invariably better than what 
you think of it. '''" '"' "''" What has antiquity 
produced, in the weaker sex, so vigorous and firm 
as to be worthy of comparison with the new heroines 
whom you have brought into the world — with 
' Sabine ' and ' Emihe,' those Roman ladies of your 
conception *? " ^ 

But if there are points in which men recognise, 
although they may not resemble, one another, it is 
no less true that there are other points in which they 
resemble, but do not recognise, each other. Certain 
feelings belong to the nature of all countries ; they 
do not characterise the Japanese or the Parisian 
only ; they are characteristic of man, and man 
everywhere will discern in them his own image. 
There is, on the other hand, a certain uniformity of 
ideas which can only belong to certain degrees and 

- Balzac, " Lettre stir Cinna," at the beginning of that tragedy. 

Q 2 



228 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

special circumstances of civilisation ; and the more 
absolute and uniform these ideas become at any 
time, in any country, the more markedly will they 
characterise it. All the actions and writings of the 
period will bear their impress ; authors will 
assimilate their fictions and harmonise their 
characters therewith, whatever may be their age 
and land : they will thus impress upon them a 
particular physiognomy, which will be taken for 
the local physiognomy, of the man and the time to 
which the action refers, although it is, properly 
speaking, the physiognomy of the author and the 
period at which the action is represented ; this will 
not, however, be recognised, because it will manifest 
itself beneath a different costume. When EmiHe 
spoke of the " republic and liberty," could she appear 
anything but a Roman lady ? And in the line : 

" Si j'ai s^duit Cinna, j'en s^duirai bien d'autres :" 

in the importance which she attaches to " her 
favours," which are to be the price of a revolution, 
which of the spectators ever thought of discerning 
the pride of a romance-heroine of the seventeenth 
century 1 Yet such she nevertheless was, but her 
character was the less discoverable by the eyes of her 
contemporaries, as she had borrowed from them 
all the singularity of their own manners in order to 
engraft it upon times and manners totally different. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 229 

— \ 

Thus, unperceived and unintentionally, Corneille 
has subjected his characters to the sway of the ideas 
of his own time — a time at which protracted disorders 
had introduced into morality, which was still far 
from having made great progress, somewhat of that 
uncertainty which is engendered by party ties and 
the duties of position. The fewness of general ideas j 
combined with the multitude and diversity of private 
interests to leave great latitude to that pseudo- 
morality, which is made to suit the necessities of the 
moment, and which the requirements of conscience 
transform into a State virtue. The principles of 
common morality seemed binding only on those 
persons who were not authorised by great interests 
to contemn them ; and no one felt the slightest 
surprise at these words of Livie : — 

" Toils ces crimes d'Etat qu'on fait pom- la couronne, 
Le ciel nous en absout alors qu'il nous la donne ; 
Et dans le sacre rang ou sa faveur I'a mis, 
Le passe devient juste et I'avenir permis." 

UnHmited devotion to the cause or condition which 
a man had embraced was a line of conduct which 
might not be approved, but which met with discussion 
rather than condemnation. Few actions were thought 
sufficiently culpable in themselves not to find an 
excuse in private motives ; and few characters were 
so well estabhshed as to be deemed inaccessible to 
the influence of such motives. Mme. de Rambouillet, 
the most respected woman of her time, received 



230 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

from Cardinal Richelieu, "who held her in great 
esteem," ^ a message in which he begged her, as a 
friend, to inform him of whatever was said about 
him at the meetings which were then held at her 
house ; and Segrais, on learning her refusal to 
comply with this request,^ ascribes it to the fact 
" that she did not know what it was to be a partisan, 
and to do any one a bad turn." So, acting as the 
Cardinal's spy would have been nothing more than 
''becoming a partisan !" And who would have 
blamed Mme. de Rambouillet for becoming a partisan 
of the prime minister ? Emeri, the superintendent 
of the finances, once said in open council, " that good 
faith was a quality expected only of merchants, and 
that those masters of requests who alleged it as a 
reason in matters concerning the king, deserved to 
be punished." ^ It is true that, in his youth, Emeri 
had been condemned to be hanged ; but the greatest 
scoundrels never say aloud anything but what honest 
folks are wiUing to hear. Struck with wonder at a 
liberty which they did not feel themselves capable of 
attaining, these honest persons said : " He is an able 
statesman ! " and their only conclusion was that, to 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 29. 
2 She told Bois-Robert, who had undertaken this friendly office, " that 
those who visited her were so strongly persuaded of the respect and 
friendship which she entertained for his Eminence, that not one of them 
would be bold enough to speak ill of him in her presence; and that 
therefore she would never have occasion to give him such information." 
— " Segraisiana," p. 30. ^ Dq Eetz, " Memoires," vol. i. p. 90. 



PIEERE CORNEILLE. 231 

be a statesman, it was necessary to be a dishonest 
man.^ Some men of superior mind, such as Cardinal 
de Retz, perceived in Emeries opinions as much want 
of judgment as meanness of heart ; ^ but this same 
Cardinal de Retz sought to obtain, by revolutionising 
the State, " not only an honest, but an illustrious "^ ^ 
mode of deserting the ecclesiastical order with which 
he had unwillingly been connected. At this epoch, 
long-continued disorders had left every man the 
care and the power of making his own position 
in society ; all interests and all ambitions were 
incessantly in conflict, if only for the honour of 
gaining the victory. Upon a man's dignity devolved 
the task of maintaining his rank ; glory dispensed 
with virtue, and pride might consist in believing 
oneself above the performance of duties.* 

The most insignificant facts become worthy of 
notice when they clearly reveal and distinctly cha- 

1 That Photin is an Emeri, who, in the " Mort de Pompee," says : 
"La justice n'est pas une vertu d'Etat," 
and who maintains that a prince should 

" Fuir comme un deshonneur la vertu qui nous perd, 
Et voler, sans scrupule, au crime qui le sert," 

And Voltaire, who is violently indignant at the want of probability of 
such a statement, and declares in his Commentaries that such maxims had 
never been uttered, and that a man who wishes his advice to be taken 
would not dress it in so abominable a garb — even Voltaire had not 
thoroughly examined, and did not rightly understand, the time of 
Corneille. In proof that that period was veiy different from the time of 
Voltaire, it is only necessary to observe that, in Voltaire's time, not even 
an Emeri would have broached such an opinion in open council. 
~ De Retz, " Mdmoires," vol. i. p. 99. 
3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 31. ■* See Appendix C. 



232 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

racterise the spirit of the age. M. de Luynes was 
one day bantering the young Duke de Rhetelois, 
who was then sixteen years of age, on the care 
which he took to have his hair well curled. The 
Duke replied that it curled naturally ; " and when 
M. de Luynes, in presence of the king, affected 
astonishment at this, the king inquired if what he 
said were true. 'No, Sire,' repHed the Duke de 
Rhetelois. * Why did you not say so when I asked 
you 1 ' inquired M. de Luynes. ' Because,' answered 
the Duke, ' I tell truth to the king, but to you what 
I please.' " ^ This same Duke de Rhetelois would 
have laid his hand to his sword to answer a contra- 
diction, for no one then suffered another man to 
give him the lie ; but claimed for himself alone the 
right of contradicting his own statements. 

Such traits of character as these were continually 
occurring before the eyes of Corneille ; and these 
traits he has bestowed upon the Greeks and Romans, 
who were thought " so like and yet so much flat- 
tered" by his fellow-countrymen, who eagerly 
acknowledged the authenticity of these " illustrious 
ancients," as they had no difficulty in feeling them- 
selves to be Greeks and Eomans hke them. The 
genius of Corneille, and the subtlety of his reasonings, 
appeared to the men of his time to justify manners 
which they were better able to maintain than to 

* " M^moires de Marolles," vol. i. p. 89. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 233 

explain ; the force of his dialectics threw strong 
Hght upon principles, of which they possessed a 
feehng rather than a clear and precise idea ; and his 
political reflections struck them with all the more 
force, because they led them farther than they had 
ever yet travelled upon a road with which they were 
well acquainted. When the Marechal de Grammont 
said, " Corneille is the breviary of kings," it was 
less, I think, from a just appreciation of Cinna's noble 
deliberation, than from a courtier's admiration of that 
arrogant contempt for morality which is thought 
appropriate to lofty positions because it is at variance 
with vulgar maxims : but the true feelings and 
sublime impulses which a man of genius alone could 
derive from so strange a system were required to 
behold — 

" Le grand Coud^ pleurant aux vers du grand Corneille." 

The great vice of such a system is that the merit 
of its effects depends absolutely upon the position of 
its characters. Some moments may occur in the 
life of a man, when extraordinary circumstances 
render it imperative on him to be actuated only by 
one single feeling, — when the maxims of prudence, 
and even of ordinary morality, may and must be 
silent in presence of considerations of a probably 
superior order, and leave the man to the influence of 
a single virtue and a single interest. If that man. 



234 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

possessing an energetic and simple natural character, 
has accustomed himself to sacrifice all to the object of 
his desire — if, proceeding always with firm step to 
the execution of his designs, he has never experienced 
either those mental disturbances which arise from 
uncertainty with regard to duty, or that hesitation of 
will which is occasioned by the conflict of two 
afiections, — then, when an imperious circumstance 
presents itself before him, with promptitude and firm- 
ness he sweeps away all obstacles at a blow, darts 
forward to the goal, and roughly seizes upon that 
fortunate necessity which makes him a great man. 
This sometimes occurs to the heroes of Corneille ; 
when the character with which he has endowed them 
becomes a virtue, that virtue subjugates and governs 
the whole man, both as regards his feelings and his 
position ; and everything bends before this character, 
to complete the greatness of which nothing is wanting 
after it has found employment for all its power. 

But this power does not always find means for its 
worthy exercise, and the display of its strength some- 
times bears a closer resemblance to the pomp of 
parade than to the real activity of combat. Thus, in 
"Heraclius," Pulcherie exhausts herself in uttering 
insults against Phocas, which are not attended with 
sufficient difficulty and danger to be worthy of her ; 
she requires an opportunity in which the haughtiness 
of her contempt, and the inflexibility and frankness of 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 235 

her resentment, may be an act of courage and virtue. 
In the position of Nicomede, the necessity of braving'^ 
and affronting all who surround him is not sufficiently 
evident to save his perpetual bravado from occasion- 
ally appearing out of place. Emilie's inflexibility is., 
admirable if we only think of the position in which 
she has been placed by her thirst for vengeance ; but 
it is excessive if we weigh the motives of her passion 
for revenge : the errors of Augustus, from whom she 
has consented to receive so many benefits, no longer 
deserve the firmness with which she perseveres in her 
hatred of him ; and that " adorable fury " of Balzac's 
doctor,^ though " adorable " if you please, when the 
position suits her character, is, in fact, nothing better 
than a " fury,'' when such is not the case. 

It is impossible for their position not to frequently 
fail Corneille's characters, for they cannot find a 
suitable place elsewhere than in the most extraor- 
dinary circumstances of life. It has been urged 
against them that they speak too long, and talk too 
much of themselves. " They talk too much to make 
themselves known," said Vauvenargues ; but how 



1 " A doctor iu my neighbourhood, who usually adopts the lofty style, 
certainly speaks of her in a strange manner ; and there is no harm in your 
knowing whither you have carried his mind. He was satisfied, on the 
first day, with saying that your Emilie was the rival of Cato and Brutus, 
in her passion for liberty. At this hour, howevei*, he goes much farther ; 
sometimes he says that she is possessed by the demon of the reimblic ; and 
sometimes he calls her the beautiful, the reasonable, the holy, and the 
adorable, fury." — Balzac, " Lcttre sur Ciuua." 



236 LIFE^'MB' 



WRITINGS OF 



could we know them if they did not speak 1 A 
single dramatic action could not possibly include 
enough facts and circumstances for the display of 
such characters in their entirety, and could not show, 
by what they do, all that they are capable of doing. 
They are not characters who limit their conduct to 
the exertion of influence over the action of the 
moment, or to bursting violently into a particular 
passion ; they embrace and sway the whole indivi- 
dual ; and they would need an entire lifetime to 
make themselves thoroughly known and understood. 
Upon the stage, they have not enough time or space : 
Nicomede cannot display thereon that military talent 
on which he rests his confidence and pride ; power- 
less at the court of Prusias, he can neither give 
evidence of that enlightened prudence which enables 
him to foresee and to frustrate the designs of the 
Romans, nor of that tranquil greatness of soul which 
can find no surer means of escaping from power than 
braving it, — 

" D'estimer beaucoup Rome et ne la craindre point." 

Consequently, in order to make us acquainted with 
Nicomede, it becomes necessary for Prusias to draw 
him momentarily from his inactive position by per- 
mitting him to answer Flaminius in his stead. 
Corneille was not aware of another expedient for 
furnishing even Nicomede with enough words to 



1 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 237 

supply the place of those actions which befit such a 
character as his. In " Rodogune," Cleopatra, ham-./ 
pered by her position, cannot give yent to the violence 
of her hatred, and the unbending nature of her 
ambition ; time fails her to develop before us the 
progress of her combinations ; and she details them 
to us that we may know them. If the stern require- 
ments of duty allowed Pauline to manifest in her 
actions the strength of her love for Severe, as well as 
her persistence in sacrificing him, she would not 
be obliged to say so much about the great virtue 
involved in the sacrifice. All these characters speak 
when compelled to do so by the necessities of the 
scene, and not by the exigencies of the action ; they 
speak sometimes without waiting the proper oppor- 
tunity for so doing ; though such a course is not in 
harmony with the almost exclusive empire exerted 
over them by their character. Character, regarded as 
a simple natural disposition, is manifested only when it 
finds itself in presence of an object adapted to bring it 
into play ; whereas passion, a violent movement of the 
soul, inclines in every direction, vents itself wherever 
it can, and is able to furnish much more naturally 
that abundance of discourse, which is necessary on 
the stage. When dying Cleopatra reveals to her 
son her crimes and dreadful projects, she is hurried 
on by passion ; her hatred is no longer able to act ; 
she has no consolation but in declaring it ; and her 



238 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

revelations are therefore perfectly natural. But the 
revelations which Cleopatra makes to Laonice in the 
early acts are not so, because they are simple deve- 
lopments of character, skilfully given by the person 
herself, instead of being naturally provoked by the 
course of events. 

" Not only do Corneille's heroes possess few 
passions which wage war against their character, 
but it rarely happens that their character is set in 
motion by the ordinary feelings of the heart, as they 
may exist under simple circumstances. They most 
frequently give expression to ideas, and almost to 
doctrines ; their speeches generally consist of reason- 
ings, animated by strong conviction and pressing 
logic, but somewhat cold and confined within the 
circle of mental combinations. A principle, a general 
and systematic idea, holds sway and manifests itself 
throughout ; and on the truth or falsity of this prin- 
ciple the conduct of the persons of the drama invari- 

/ ably depends. Thus Pauline is guided by the idea 
of duty, and Polyeucte by that of religious faith ; 
and these ideas, admirably adapted to elevate the 
soul and exalt the imagination, develop a most pas- 
sionate feeling in both personages; but even this 
feeling is based upon a principle. When Polyeucte 
exclaims : 

" Grand Dieu ! de vof5 bontds il faut que je I'obtienne; 
EUe a trop de vertu pour n'^tre pas chr^tienne : " 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 239 

it is the inflexibility of the principle " out of the 
church there is no salvation/' which produces this 
extremely touching and truthful movement. It is a 
reasoned knowledge of the devotion which patriotism 
imposes on a Roman, which sustains the inflexible 
firmness of young Horace ; and that sublime out- 
burst — 

" Quoi ! vous me pleureriez mourant pour mon pays ? " 

is an expression of the astonishment of a man who 
hears a truth which he deems incontestable, called 
in question. Cinna says to Emilie — 

" Votosfaites de.s vertus au gre de votre haine ; " 

and she answers : 

" Je me fais des vertus dignes d'une Romaine." 

Emihe's hatred is, in fact, a virtue and not a feeling, 
in her own opinion ; she thinks that she ought to 
hate Augustus, and she tells us why she hates him, 
rather than explains how she does so. Chimene's 
pertinacity in demanding the death of Eodrigue is 
altogether the result of reflection ; whatever grief she 
may have felt at the death of her father, it is not grief 
which hurries her to the feet of the king, but the idea 
of what she is bound by honour to do. But the feehng 
which possesses her, continually diverts her attention 
from the idea which governs her ; at the same time 
that she does what she thinks duty commands for 



240 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

hor father, she says what she feels for her lover, and 
the " Cid,'' the only one of Corneille's tragedies in 
which love ventures to display all its power, is also 
the only one in which he has followed the natural 
rule of giving action to character and words to 
passion. 

Moreover, in Corneille, absolute truth is, here as 
elsewhere, superseded by relative truth; where we 
cannot discover the characteristics of man in general, 
we find the features of the Frenchman of the seven- 
teenth century ; and the somewhat talkative virtue 
of his heroes could not but be well received at a time 
when the necessity of duly maintaining his rank in 
society placed the act of asserting his own importance 
among the duties, or at least among the accomplish- 
ments, of a man of merit. To talk of oneself was then 
a most common practice. It was Balzac's custom, 
whenever he mentioned his own performances in 
conversation, to take off his hat, apparently out of po- 
liteness to those who were listening to him. One day, 
when he was suffering from a violent cold. Menage 
said he had caught it from the number of oppor- 
tunities which he gave himself for taking off his hat ! 
This joke occasioned a serious quarrel between them. 
" M. de la Rochefoucauld,'' says Segrais, " was the 
most polite man in the world ; he well knew how to 
observe all the proprieties, and above all things, 
he never praised himself M. de Roquelaure and 



PIERRE CORXEILLE. 241 

M. de Miossans were men of great talent, but they were 
never tired of praising themselves. They had a great 
many admirers. Speaking of them, M. de la Roche- 
foucauld used to say : " I repent of the law which 
I have imposed upon myself not to speak in my 
own praise ; if I did so, I should have many more 
followers. Look at MM. de Roquelaure and de 
Miossans, who, for two mortal hours, have been 
talking to twenty people about nothing but their own 
merits. Among those who listen to them, there are 
only two or three who cannot endure them ; but the 
other seventeen applaud them loudly, and consider 
them incomparable. '^ ^ 

Nevertheless, while endowing his heroes with 
taste and the gift of speech, Corneille does not 
forget to place them in positions in which they will 
have opportunity to act ; in his dramas, everything 
tends to effects of position ; and he is constantly 
seeking to prepare and to put forward these effects. 
In his " Examinations,'' he rarely praises himself for 
the expression which he has given to feelings and 
ideas ; but he is continually congratulating himself 
on the invention of this or that position, or else of the 
means which he had used to give likelihood and suit- 
ability to the position which he desired to introduce. 
In truth, he abuses the too easy art of creating the 
embarrassments which he needs ; and it is to the 

' " Segraisiana," p. 32. 



342 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

subtleties of his age, rather than to nature, that he 
looks for the feelings necessary to the action which 
he intends to produce. Thus Rodogune, when ready 
to do her duty, and marry whichever of the two 
princes may be declared the elder, does not think 
herself at liberty to bestow her hand without exacting 
the condition that her first husband shall be avenged ; 
that is to say, without obliging the prince she may 
espouse to assassinate his mother : — 

" Je me mettrai trop haut s'il faut que je me donne. 
Quoique ais^ment je cede aux ordres de mon roi, 
II n'est pas bien ais^ de m'obtenir de moi. 

***** 

Ce cceur vous est acquis apres le diademe, 
Prince, mais gardez-vous de le rendre k lui-meme ; 
Vousy renoncerez peut-etre pour jamais 
Quand je vous aurai dit a quel prix je le mets." 

This fearful proposition is merely a subtle invention, 
intended to act as a basis for the position of the 
fifth act, by placing " Rodogune herself under the 
necessity of prolonging the uncertainty of the two 
princes ; '' and when this uncertainty is terminated 
by her confession to Antiochus, and by the renun- 
ciation of Seleucus, the facility with which Rodogune 
abandons her project adds greatly to the whimsicality 
of the idea that produced it : — 

" Votre refus est juste autant que ma demande. 
A force de respect votre amour s'est trahi. 
Je voudrois vous hair, s'il m'avoit obei ; 
Et je n'estime pas I'honneur d'une vengeance 
Jusqu'k vouloir d'un crime etre la recompense." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 243 

Thus it was that the age in which Corneille lived 
taught him to treat the feeHngs of the heart. The 
unbounded devotion of this age to love is an example, 
among many others, of the effects of superstition upon 
true worship ; and the grave and simple Corneille, 
by his submission to the superstitious gallantries 
of his time, affords a striking evidence of the 
manner in which a man of genius may subject his 
reason to the caprices of the multitude, to whose 
advice he listens that he may obtain a hearing for 
himself 

The "Cid'^ and "Polyeucte" effectually raise 
Corneille above the suspicion of having disregarded 
those characteristics of love which render it worthy 
of being depicted by a man of genius, and of having 
looked to the romances of his time for that colouring 
which his imagination refused to supply. It is, how- 
ever, impossible to deny that, in most of his pieces, 
Corneille has treated love, not as a passion that fills, 
agitates, and sways the soul, but as a position that 
imposes certain duties, prescribes a certain course of 
conduct, and coldly disposes of life, without lending 
it any charms. The author of the " Cid " and of 
"Polyeucte'^ could not have been ignorant of the nature 
of true love ; even if he had not experienced its full 
ardour and extravagance, he was certainly acquainted 
with that sincere and profound tenderness of heart, 
that perfect confidence, which brings two souls into 

R 2 



244 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

union, althougli duty may call them in different, or even 
opposite directions — that sweet and intimate com- 
munion of two lovers, which leads one to sympathise 
with all the sufferings of the other, which opposes union 
of hearts to the misfortunes of destiny, and estabhshes, 
between two beings who are separated by all beside, 
secret bonds which nothing can avail to sunder. 
Chimene and Rodrigue converse of their common 
affairs, when speaking of the opposite duties imposed 
upon them ; and, if such an expression may be 
allowed, they arrange together for their perform- 
ance : — 

" Tu n'as fait le devoir que d'un homme de bien ; 
Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m'as appris le mien." 

There is nothing which the love of one of the two 
lovers would desire to wrest from the honour of the 
other : — 

" Va; je ne te hais point. — Tu le dois. — Je ne puis. 
— Crains-tu si peu le bl&me et si peu les faux bruits ? 
Quand on saura mon crime, et que ta flamme dure, 
Que ne publieront pas I'envie et I'imposture ? " 

But when E-odrigue and Chimene have become con- 
vinced that it is impossible to stifle their affection, 
and that they are not called upon to display 
their strength and virtue in- this vain attempt, then, 
left for a moment to the unresisted influence 
of that love which constitutes their sole happiness 
in the midst of the most cruel misfortunes, they 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 245 

feel, they think, they almost speak together ; the 
echo of their words is that cry which escapes 
simultaneously from two souls deeply affected by 
the same grief : — 

" Rodrigue, qui I'eut cru ? — Chimene, qui I'eut dit ? 
Que notre heur fut si proche et si tot se perdit ! " 

And their farewell serves only to complete the union 
of their destiny : — 

" Adieu ! Je vais trainer uue niouraute vie, 
Tant que par ta poursuite elle me soit ravie. 
— Si j'en obtiens I'effet, je te donne ma foi 
De ne respirer pas un moment apres toi." 

They can now separate. Rodrigue could even fight 
Chimene's brother, if Chimene had a brother desirous 
of avenging his father ; and Chimene can pursue 
Rodrigue with hostile intentions. They have met, and 
discovered their mutual sentiments ; they will now 
understand each other in spite of appearances most 
unintelligible in the eyes of the world, and the mys- 
terious freemasonry of love will never allow either 
of them to be exposed to the pain of being misunder- 
stood by the adored being to whom he remains 
faithful, even at the moment of sacrificing him. 

Pauline, when united to Polyeucte, and determined 
to endure all the sacrifices that may be imposed on 
her by this tie, nevertheless does not attempt to 
dissemble to Severe those feelings with which he 
was so well acquainted ; but she appeals to the love 



246 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

of Severe himself to support her in the performance 
of a duty which — 

" * * * Moins fei-me et inoins sincere, 

N'auroit pas xa6rit6 I'amour du grand Severe ; " 

and to him she still belongs even when she rejects 
him in the name of her virtue. 

The poet who could conceive thus of love un- 
doubtedly possessed within himself the necessary 
qualifications for describing it. In a life least subject 
to the empire of the passions, experience, when 
properly used, supplies the imagination, on this point, 
with more touching details than it is ever able to 
employ. " Corneille's temperament,^' says Fontenelle, 
"inclined him sufficiently to love, but never to 
libertinism, and seldom to strong attachments." ' 
Strong attachments are always rare, and it is enough 
to have been under the influence of one to know 
what opinion to entertain on the subject ; but 
Corneille often forgot his own opinion to remember 
only what he had heard others say about it. Speak- 
ing of himself, he has said : — 

" En matiere d' amour je suis fort inegal ; 
J'en ^cris assez bien ; je le fais assez mal." 

Whether he made love well or ill, he did not always 
write about it as well as he thought. He too 
frequently allowed borrowed habits to trample upon 

1 Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille/' p. 125. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 247 

the dictates of his heart and reason; and he sacri- 
ficed the feeHngs with which he had animated 
Chimene and Pauline for the insipidities which he 
had been taught to put into the mouths of Caesar 
and Cleopatra. 

At the present day, in order to judge the loves of 
Caesar and Cleopatra, of Antiochus and Rodogune, 
as they were judged by the most talented and 
sensible men of the seventeeth century,^ we must 
transport ourselves into the system of love gene- 
rally adopted at that period, with which Corneille's 
characters, as it becomes well-educated persons, act 
in strict conformity. We must resign ourselves to 
behold in love neither hberty of choice, nor suitability 
of tastes, characters, and habits, nor any of those 
bonds which become all the more dear as we better 
appreciate them, and better understand their true 
motives. To the fashionable world of CorneiUe's time, 
love was nothing but an ordinance of Heaven, an 
influence of the stars, a fatality as inexplicable as it 
w^as inevitable. Every one knows by heart these 
lines of Rodogune : — 

" II est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies 
Dont, par le doux rapport, les ames assorties 
S'attachent I'une k I'autre, et se laissent piquer 
Par ces je ne sais quoi qu'on ne peut expliquer." 

The following lines, from the " Suite au Menteur," 

' Among others, see Saint-Evremoud's opinion in his '*Discom-s sur 
I'Alexandre de Racine," in vol. iii. p. 149 of his Works. 



248 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

would be even better known than the foregoing, if 
the piece were read as much : — 

" Quand les ordres du ciel nous ont faits I'un pour I'autre 
Lise, c'est un accord bientot fait que le notre ; 
Sa main, entre les coeurs, par un secret pouvoir, 
Seme I'intelligence avant que de se voir ; 
II prepare si bien I'amant et la maitresse. 
Que leur ^me, au seul nom, s'emeut et s'int^resse ; 
On s'estime, on se chercbe, on s'aime en un moment ; 
Tout ce qu'on s'entredit persuade ais^ment ; 
Et sans s'inquieter d'aucunes peurs frivoles, 
La foi semble courir au-devant des paroles." 

The same idea occurs again in " Berenice '/' ^ it is 
apparent in all Corneille^s dramas ; and no wonder, 
for it was the idea of the time. A passion thus pre- 
determinate was necessarily of instantaneous origin. 
Thus arose the passion of the Duke de Nemours for 
the Princess of Cleves, the various movements of 
which were afterwards observed with so much 
delicacy, and described with so much truthfulness. 
Beauty, the only charm whose full value is appreciated 
at a single glance, then held sway, not only with 
irresistible power, but with tyranny. "At forty- 
eight years of age," says Segrais, " Mme. de Mont- 
bazon was still so beautiful that she eclipsed Mme. de 
Roquelaure, who was only twenty-two years old; and 
one day, happening to meet together at an assembly, 
Mme. de Roquelaure was obliged to withdraw." - 

I " * * * Ce don fut Veffet d'une force imprevue : 
De cet ordre du ciel, qui verse en nos esprits 
Les principes secrets de prendre et d'etre pris." 
2 '' Segraisiana," pp. 133, 134. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 249 

The Memoirs of the time furnish us with many 
instances of ladies who were actually obliged to 
retire because a more beautiful rival had entered the 
room. It seemed as though beauty were a supreme 
and exclusive empire, the loss of which left the 
vanquished nought but shame and flight. La Bruyere 
himself declares that " that love which arises suddenly 
is longest in curing.'' He even seems to think that 
it alone deserves the name of love : " Love is born 
suddenly/' he says, " without other reflection, from 
temperament or from weakness ; a glimpse of beauty 
transfixes and decides us. That love which grows 
gradually is too much like friendship to be a violent 
passion.'' ^ 

Perhaps these sudden eff'ects, these sun-strokes of 
love, which are now the exclusive property of our 
worst romance-writers, were then able to obtain the 
belief of a philosopher. Men and women, whose 
worldly life was ceaselessly occupied with ideas or 
intrigues of love, were naturally always susceptible, 
or at least thought themselves susceptible, of its 
influence ; and if, as La Rochefoucauld observes, 
" there are some people who would never have fallen 
in love, if they had never heard love mentioned," 
many persons, through hearing it talked of wherever 
they went, fancied they had found it where it did not 
exist. 

' La Bruyirc, " Caracteres," pp. 179, 180. 



250 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Surprised at these effects of the imagination, some 
men endeavoured to explain them by other causes 
than the influence of the stars ; and these causes 
were generally of a most ridiculous character. In 
order to prove that the seat of love is in the blood, 
Segrais relates a story of a German gentleman whose 
faithless mistress, desiring to get rid of him, ran him 
twice through the body with a sword. He did not 
die of his wounds ; but, strange to say, when he had 
recovered, says Segrais, " he felt as much indifference 
for the princess as if he had never loved her, and he 
attributed this to his loss of blood." ^ 

This amorous devotion — the consequence of a fatal 
destiny — was then the ideal of a belle passion, at 
least as regarded the perfect lover ; for fatality, to 
which the heart of his mistress was equally subject, 
could have no influence upon her conduct towards 
him. The ladies held firmly, at least in theory, by 
this principle, which was as favourable to their vanity 
as to their virtue. Solely entrusted with the care 
and duty of defending themselves, they felt themselves 
all the more powerful because so high a value was set 
on the happiness of a passion which accomplished the 
destiny of the loftiest souls. The proofs of this high 
price of their conquest constituted their glory ; for 
" a woman^s glory " was then a common phrase. 
Madame de Sevigne, when she" declared that " the 

' " Segraisiana," p. 10. 



I 



PIERKE CORNEILLE. 251 

honour of these gentlemen is quite as delicate and 
tender as that of these ladies," believed she had 
almost made a discorerj ; and the Academy pro- 
nounced, in its " Opinions on the ' Cid,' '' that if " it 
had been allowable for the poet to make one of the 
two lovers prefer love to duty, it may be said that it 
would have been more excusable to lay this fault on 
Rodrigue than on Chimene ; as Rodrigue was a man, 
and his sex — which is, as it were, entitled to shut its 
eyes on all considerations in order to satisfy its love — 
would have rendered his action less strange and less 
unsuppor table.'' ^ 

This is the key to the almost constant superiority 
of Corneille's heroines over his heroes. She who 
commands both herself and others, in the most 
important circumstance of life, must be, under all 
circumstances, the most illustrious ; and after the 
decision of the Academy, it is not surprising that 
Corneille should have sacrificed the inflexibihty of 
Cinna to the advantage of bringing Emilie's unyielding 
nature into strong relief But it will then be equally 
evident to what frivolous interests that glory must be 
attached which is based upon the petty events of a 
woman's life, and judged by the caprices of her vanity. 
No further astonishment will be felt at beholding 
Eurydice, in " Surena," deUver her lover to death by 
her obstinacy in desiring that, as he cannot marry her, 

* See the Appendix to Voltaire's edition of the " Cid," p. 392, 



252 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

he should marry none but the person of her choice. 
" I will," she exclaims — 

" * * * * * Malgre votre roi, 
Disposer d'une main qui ne peut etre a moi. 
Je veux que ce grand choix soit mon dernier ouvrage, 
Qu'il tienne lieu vers moi d'un ^ternel hommage, 
Que mon ordre le regie, et qu'on me voie enfin 
Reine de votre coeur et de votre destin." 

The same whim assists Berenice to console herself 
for the loss of Titus : — 

" Je veux donner le bien que je n'ose garder ; 
Je veux du moins, je veux oter a ma rivale, 
Ce miracle vivant, cette ame sans ^gale. 
Qu'en d^pit des Remains, leur digne souVerain, 
S'il prend ime moitie, la prenne de ma main ; 
Et pour tout dire enfin, je veux que Berenice 
Ait une creature en leur imperatrice." 

Corneille's " Sophonisbe/' the ill-success of which 
Saint-Evremond ascribes solely to the excessive 
perfection with which Corneille had retained " her 
true character/^ ^ — this daughter of Hasdrubal, amidst 
her hatred of the Romans, and her dread of slavery, 
regards the pleasure of robbing a rival of Masi- 
nissa's affection as the greatest happiness of that 
marriage which is to deprive her of her triumph. 

* Corneille, wlio almost alone possesses the good taste of antiquity, has 
had the misfortune of not pleasing our age, for having entered into the 
genius of those nations, and preserved to the daughter of Hasdrubal her 
true character. Thus, to the shame of our judgments, he who has surpassed 
all our authors, and who has, perhaps, here surpassed himself, has restored 
to these great names all that was due to them, and has not been able to 
oblige us to render to himself all that we owe to him." — Saint-Evremond, 
"GEuvres," vol. iii. pp. 141, 142. 



PIEREE CORNEILLE. 253 

The lovers of these illustrious coquettes, devotedly 
submissive to their whims, await, as Antiochus 
pleases, without rebellion and without blasphemy, 
whatever it may please their glory to ordain ; and 
tricks of vanity mingle without effort, in Cor- 
neille's latest pieces, with exaggerations of pride 
through which some few scintillations of genius and 
mementoes of greatness are discernible only at rare 
intervals. 

Once entered upon a false train of ideas, Corneille 
was unable to regain the true path by using that 
resource which is supplied by the observation of the 
natural feelings ; for he had become too accustomed 
to seek them solely in his imagination. The imagina- 
tion mingles much that is false with the truth which 
it presents ; it creates for the poet a kind of private 
world, placed between him and the real world which 
he no longer cares to contemplate, for he no longer 
even suspects its existence. Into this world of fancy 
which Corneille had formed for himself, swayed by 
the turn of mind of his contemporaries, and placing 
at their service the logical firmness of his imagination, 
he no longer received the light which the natural 
emotions of our soul cast upon the objects which 
excite them. Justice, goodness, indeed all the human 
virtues, were feelings before they were ideas ; who 
would ever have imagmed generosity and devote- 
ment, if feelings had not first made him aware of their 



254 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

existence 1 By the order of these feeHngs, as they 
exist in a happy nature, properly developed by 
reflection, the order of our duties is regulated. Never 
will the most exalted soul, never will the severest 
virtue, sacrifice a single one of these duties, unless the 
sacrifice be commanded by a more important duty : 
and where this consciousness of a superior duty does 
not exist, the sacrifice is unjust, the virtue is counterfeit, 
and the appearance of greatness is deceptive. Old 
Horace, when he believes that his son has fled, forgets 
his paternal love, and desires, nay more, almost 
commands, the death of his son ; but love of his 
country, the obligations imposed upon his family by 
the confidence of his fellow-citizens, the criminality of 
the coward who had betrayed that confidence, and 
even the advantage of his son, for whom death would 
be a thousand times more preferable than an infamous 
life, — all these are feelings so powerful, and of so 
exalted an order, that we are not surprised to see 
that they gain the victory over even paternal love, 
the well-known force of which only adds to the 
admiration inspired by the superior force which 
has conquered it. But when Rosamonde, the widow 
of Pertharite, ^ threatened with the death of her son 
if she will not consent to marry Grimoald, the usurper 
of her husband's kingdom, declares to Grimoald that 

^ Or at least his supposed widow; for Pertharite is not dead, but 
reappears at the end of the piece. 



( 



i 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 255 

she will marry him only on condition that he will put 
her son to death, because she hopes that so atrocious 
an act, by destroying the affection felt by the people 
for Grimoald's virtues, will render vengeance more 
easy to herself, we feel neither admiration nor 
sympathy for her conduct ; for the thirst for ven- 
geance could never be sufficiently powerful, or appear 
sufficiently legitimate, to stifle not only a mother's 
love for her offspring, but also that sentiment of 
justice which forbids us to sacrifice an innocent being 
to the memory or even to the interests of another. 
Rosamonde's proposition is, therefore, opposed to all 
human and poetic truth. Fontenelle, seeking for the 
cause of the ill success of " Pertharite," attributes it 
to oldness of mind, which, he says, "brings dry- 
ness and harshness in its train." ^ But Corneille was 
not old when he wrote " Pertharite " ; ^ and he had 
no more reasons for being harsh at forty-seven years 
of age, when he had four sons, ^ than when he was 

^ Fontenelle, "■ Vie de Corneille," p. 108. 
2 He was forty-seven years old. 
^ Corneille had four sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Pierre 
Corneille, was a captain of cavalry, and was wounded, in 1667, at the siege 
of Douai, which was captured on the 6th of July, by Louis XIV. He was 
brought back to Pai'is on a litter plentifully supplied with straw. On 
arriving at the door of his father's house, in the Rue d'Argenteuil, the 
porters, solely intent upon canying the wounded man into his room, 
scattered the straw about the street. This was during the early days of 
that strict system of police established in Paris by the administration of 
Louis XIV., and so strenuously enforced by D'Aubray and La Reynie. The 
commissaries and inspectors rigorously executed the orders they had 
received. One of them cited Pierre Corneille before the lieutenant of 
police at the Ch^telet, for contravening the regulations in reference to the 



256 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

thirty-eight years old, ^ and just married ; and 
certainly he still possessed many more lively and true 
feelings than are required to enlighten and regulate 
the mind. But a false system, the fruit of his sub- 
mission to the ideas of his time, would not allow him 
to listen to his own feelings, and thus to paint nature 
with truthfulness ; so that the nature which he 
reproduced was as factitious and false as the ideas of 
his contemporaries. 

The style of Corneille varied with the vicissitudes 
of his genius. Astonishment has been expressed at 
this ; but there would have been more room for 
astonishment had it been otherwise, and had his style 
not remained faithful, both in good and evil fortune, 
to the character of his thoughts. Writing was never 
anything to him but the expression of his ideas ; and 
his contemporaries attest that carefulness of style 
was of no avail in effects which were entirely due to 
the grandeur of the subjects which he had to depict. 
" Corneille,'' says Segrais, " was not conscious of the 
beauty of his versification, and while writing he paid 
attention, not to harmony, but only to feeling." And 
Chapelain informs us, that " Corneille, who has 

public thoroughfares. Corneille appeared, pleaded his own cause, and was 
immediately nonsuited, amidst the applause of the spectators, who con- 
ducted him home in triumph. This incident is frequently mentioned in 
the conversations and anecdote-books of the time, and Loret inserted an 
account of it in his " Muse Historique," in the form of a poetical letter to 

Madame , by Robinet. See Appendix D. I am indebted to M. Floquet 

for the discovery and communication of this interesting little fact. 
^ The age at which he wrote "Polyeucte." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 257 

written such noble poetry, was unacquainted with the 
art of versification, and it was purely nature that 
acted in him." ^ An artistic style, which, at the time 
when Corneille appeared, constituted almost the 
whole merit of a fashionable poet, had very little 
indeed to do with the merit of a dramatic author. 
Corneille introduced style into the drama by intro- 
ducing thoughts ; he said simply what he meant, and 
he therefore spoke nobly, for what he had to say was 
high and noble. The expression naturally clothed 
itself with the sublimity of that which it was intended 
to convey — or rather, in the sublimity of his poetry, 
the expression appeared to count for nothing, for it 
was the thing itself " In Corneille's writings," says 
Saint-Evremond, " grandeur is self-recognised ; the 
figures that he employs are worthy of it, when he 
intends to beautify it with any ornament ; but, ordi- 
narily, he neglects these vain shows ; he does not go 
to the skies to seek for something to increase the 
value of that which is sufficiently important upon 
earth ; it is enough for him to enter thoroughly into 
a matter, and the complete image which he gives of 
it forms that true impression which persons of. good 
sense love to receive." ^ Corneille himself would 
have vainly sought " in the skies" for wherewithal " to 
increase the value " of some of the feeHngs which 

^ " Segraisiana," pp. 76, 187. 
' Saint-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. iv. p. 16. 



258 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

he presents to our view ; they are so lofty that, 
as nothing can exceed them, expression can add 
nothing to them ; and yet they are so determinate 
and precise that there are not two ways of expressing 
them. 

We must not, therefore, expect to find in Corneille 
that poetical expression which is intended to increase 
the impression produced by an object, by connecting 
with it accessory ideas which the object would not 
have suggested of itself. We shall find in his writings 
that poetry which displays the object as it really is, 
and places it before our eyes endowed with life and 
animation, by using words that are truly adapted to 
describe it. The narrative given by E-odrigue, in 
the " Cid," presents a fine example of this : — 

"■ Cette obscure clarte qm tombe des etoiles 
Enfin, avec le flux, nous fit voir trente voiles ; 
L'onde s'enfloit dessous, et, d'un commun effort, 
Les Maures et la mer entrerent dans le port. 
On les laisse passer, tout leur paroit tranquille ; 
Point de soldats au port ; point aux murs de la ville. 
Notre profond silence abusant leurs esprits, 
lis n'osent plus douter de nous avoir surpris. 
lis abordent sans peur, ils ancrent, ils descendent, 
lit courent se livrer aux mains qui les attendent. 
Nous nous levons alors ; et, tons en meme temps, 
Poussons jusques au ciel mille cris ^clatants. * * * » 

All these expressions are simple — just those which 
a man would use who wished to narrate the 
occurrences of which the Cid is speaking ; but the 
Cid mentions only those matters which are worth 
mentioning. All necessary circumstances, and these 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 259 

alone, he brings before our eyes, because he has seen 
them ; he could not fail to see them in the position 
in which he was placed, and into that position he 
transfers us. This is true poetry. 

But the nature of the objects to be represented 
does not always admit of this, so to speak, material 
description. It frequently happens that the picture, 
being too vast to be reproduced in all its details, 
requires to be confined within a single image, which 
shall nevertheless convey an impression of the whole. 
The employment of figurative expressions then 
becomes necessary ; and this is the character of 
Cinna's narrative : — 

" Je leur fais des tableaux de ces tristes batailles 
Oti Rome par ses mains dechiroit ses entrailles, 
Ou I'aigle abattoit I'aigle, et, de chaque cote, 
Nos legions s'armoient contre lenr liberte ; 
Ou les meilleurs soldats et les chefe les plus braves 
Mettoient toute leur gloire a devenir esclaves : 
Oil, pour mieux assurer la honte de leurs fers, 
Tons vouloient k leur chaine attacher I'univers ; 
Et I'ex^crable honneur de lui donner un maitre, 
Faisant aimer h tous I'infame nom de traitre, 
Romains contre Remains, parens contre parens, 
Combattoient seulement pour le choix des tyrans. 
J'ajoute h, ce tableau la peinture effroyable 
De leur concorde impie, affreuse, inexorable, 
Funeste aux gens de bien, aux riches, au s^nat, 
Et pour tout dire enfin, de leur triumvirat, 
Mais je ne trouve point de couleurs assez noires 
Pour en reprdsenter les tragiques histoires ; 
Je les peins dans le meurtre k I'envi triomphans ; 
Rome enti^re noy^e au sang de ses enfans, * * * " 

No details could in this case have presented before the 
imagination all that is here exhibited to its view, en 

s 2 



260 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

groupe, by two or three fine images. The remainder 
of the narrative is favourable to the introduction of 
details, and Cinna, resuming the simple tone of 
narration, ceases to paint matters figuratively, and 
limits his efforts to displaying them in their reality ; 
but at the end, when he finds it necessary to sum up 
his speech and to reduce the different emotions which 
he has awakened to a single feeling and idea, he thus 
proceeds : — 

, ; ' ; "* * * * Toutes ces cruautds,^ IGV/v 

r La perte de nos biens et de nos liberies, 

Le ravage des champs, le pillage des villes, 
Et les proscriptions et les guerres civiles, 
Sont les degr^s sanglants dont Augusta a fait choix 
Pour monter sur le trone et nous donner des loix. 
Mais nous pouvons cbanger un destin si funeste, 
Puisque de trois tyrans c'est le seul qui nous reste ; 
Et que, juste une fois, il s'est priv^ d'appui, 
Perdant, pour regner seul, deux mechans comme lui. 
Lui mort, nous n'avons point de vengeur ni de maltre ; 
Avec la liberty Rome s'en va renaitre ; 

- ',,:.;. / Et nous m^riterons le nom de vrais Remains, r„. 



Si le joug qui I'accable est bris^ par nos mains." 

f r In this speech, which is one of the finest produc- 
tions of his pen, Corneille, making a simple and sober 
use of the necessary figures, employs them to express 
his idea, but never to extend it beyond its natural 
limits. Perhaps, among Corneille's most poetical 
expressions, we shall find few which do not possess 
this merit ; they are generally the result of a 
vigorous conception which clearly discerns its object, 
and which, far from surrounding it with accessory 
ideas, removes them to a distance in order to present 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 261 

it ia isolated distinctness to the imagination. Thus, 
in these celebrated hnes from " Othon :'' — 

" Je les voyois tous trois se hater sous un maitre 
Qui, charge d'un long age, a peu de temps de I'etre, 
Et tous trois k I'envi s'empresser ardemment 
A qui devoreroit ce regne d'un moment, — " 

the image of " devouring a reign " is only the 
sensible expression of a fact which, in no other 
manner, could be treated with as much fehcity and 
power ; it places the fact itself beneath our eyes, 
but adds nothing to it. The same may be said of 
this other line : — 

'' Et monte sur le faite il aspire k descendre." 

Corneille has embelHshed nothing and disguised 
nothing ; his style, guided by his thought, naturally 
rose and fell with it ; and he appears obscure only 
when an ill-conceived idea or an inopportune sen- 
timent has failed to furnish him with a sufficiently 
precise expression or a sufficiently simple turn of 
phrase. He never disdains to use the trivial 
language which is required by a trivial emotion 
or position. In "Agesilas," for example, he puts 
these words into the mouth of a lover who is 
pressing his mistress to confess her love for him : — 

" Dites done, m'aimez-vous 1 " 

A puerile idea is always rendered in all its puerility ; 
and the description of Attila's bleeding at the nose is 



262 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

worthy of the idea which suggested the adaptation of 
this accident to the purposes of tragedy : — 

"Le sang qu'apres avoir mis ce prince^ au tombeau, 
On lui voit chaque jour distiller du cerveau, 
Punit son parricide, et chaque jour vient faire 
Un tribut ^tonnant k celui de ce frere." 

The word brutal, which is used by Pulcherie in 
speaking of Phocas, is in perfect accordance with 
the idea which she has formed of his character. In 
fine, the weakness of the poet's thought is manifested 
with as httle disguise as its greatness ; and if he 
seeks to trick it out with a few ornaments, the abuses 
of mind to which he has recourse, the falsity of the 
images which he employs, and the vain inflation of 
his expressions, prove, as powerfully as the sublime 
simplicity of his beauties, that " art was not made 
for him/' Corneille could not have made use of 
art; and what his age failed to supply him with 
was a more simple nature, less overloaded by a 
multitude of conventionalisms and factitious habits, 
which he took for truth. If the state of society and 
the general character of ideas, at the time in which 
he lived, had been in greater conformity to the 
simplicity of his genius, perhaps, in one of our first 
poets, we should have also possessed a classic poet. 
Corneille is not a classic ; he is too deficient in that 
taste which is based upon a knowledge of truth, to 

' His brother Bleda. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 263 

serve always as a model ; but beauties beyond all 
comparison have nevertheless established his rank, 
and after a centmy and a half of literary affluence 
and glory, no rival has deprived him of his title of 
" Great." Even his failures may be held to confirm 
his right to this name ; before the time of Corneille, 
" Pertharite," " Othon," " Surena,'' " Attila," and 
even " Agesilas," would have been received with 
admiration by a public whom he alone had rendered 
critical. " Pertharite " was the first of his pieces 
which experienced this severe treatment. " The fall 
of the great Corneille," says Fontenelle, "may be 
numbered among the most remarkable examples of 
the vicissitudes of human affairs ; even Belisarius 
asking alms is not more striking." ^ Corneille felt this 
blow to be a misfortune to which he had not believed 
himself exposed ; and somewhat of bitterness is 
manifested in his preface to " Pertharite." " It is 
just," he says, " that after twenty years of labour, I 
should begin to perceive that I am growing too old 
to continue in vogue." Taking leave of the public, 
" before," he says, " they entirely took leave of him," 
he spent six years in perfect retirement, devoting 
himself to a metrical translation of the " Imitation of 
Jesus Christ." This work must be considered as a 
production of his piety rather than of his genius, 
although it occasionally exhibits brilliant traces of 

' Fonfcnelh, " Vic de Corneille," p. 107. 



264 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

superior talent.^ I shall not here refer to this poem, 
or to a considerable number of pieces of verse, written 
both in his youth and his old age,^ as they only 
prove that the drama was the imperious vocation of 
Corneille, and the only field in which he could appear 
with glory. Of this he was personally conscious : — 

" Pour moi, qui de louer n eus jamais le methode, 
J'ignore encor le tour du sonnet ou de I'ode ; 
Mon genie au theatre a voulu m'attacher ; 
II en a fait mon sort, je dois m'y retrancher : 
Partout ailleurs je rampe et ne suis plus moi-meme." ^ 

" He was well acquainted with elegant literature, 
history, and politics," says Fontenelle ; "but he regarded 
them chiefly in their reference to the drama. For 
all the other branches of knowledge he had neither 
leisure, nor curiosity, nor indeed much esteem/' * 

During these six years of retirement, also, Corneille 
prepared his three discourses on Dramatic Poetry, 
and wrote his Examinations of his pieces— an honour- 
able evidence of the good faith of a great man who 
was sincere enough with himself to confess his faults, 
and with others, to speak without affectation of his 
talents. They furnish us with irrefragable proofs of 
the uprightness and strength of his reason, which was 
deficient only in experience of the world ; and with 

^ See Appendix E. 
2 These pieces were printed in the edition of 1758, and have been 
reprinted in most subsequent editions of Corneille's works. 

^ These lines occur in the " Remerciement au Roi, pour I'avoir compris 
dans la liste des gratifications faites aux gens de lettres." 
■* Fontenelle, "Vie de Corneille," p. 125. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 265 

lessons that will e^er be useful to dramatic poets, for 
they will find in them all that his experience of the 
stage had taught Corneille regarding theatrical 
positions and efi"ects, with which he was all the 
better acquainted because he had not studied them 
until after he had divined their character, just in the 
same way as he sought to learn the rules of Aristotle 
in order to justify those which his own genius had 
dictated. 

His determination to renounce the drama was not, 
however, unalterable. " This," he says in the preface 
to " Pertharite," " will be the last importunity of this 
kind with which I shall trouble you ; not that I have 
adopted so strong a resolution that it cannot be 
broken, but there is great Hkelihood that I shall 
abide by it." These words would seem to indicate 
that Corneille entertained some hope that attempts 
would be made to induce him to abandon the intention 
he thus formally announced ; but he was not dis- 
posed to be easily satisfied with the proofs of esteem 
which he would require. His dedications too plainly 
show of what nature those proofs might be, and 
Boileau's severe lines on — 

" * * * Ces auteux's renommes, 
D^gotlt^s de gloire et d'argent affamds," 

were, it is said, merely the repetition of a saying of 
the great Corneille.^ But Corneille, in the position in 

^ " Our author was congratulating the great Corneille on the success of 
his tragedies, and the glory he had gained thereby. ' Yes,' answered 



266 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

which he was placed, considered money the proof of 
his glory, and was perhaps as much offended as 
grieved at the mediocrity of his fortune. Guided, in 
all that concerned his personal conduct, by remark- 
ably simple and ingenuous good-sense, he had always 
observed that a handsome price was paid for things 
of value, and he felt indignant that this recompense 
was denied to his merit. Whatever he thought him- 
self allowed to feel, he considered himself equally 
at liberty to express. When his friends found fault 
with him for not maintaining, by his conversation, 



Corneille, ' I am satiated with glory, and famished for money.' " (Note by 
Brossette, to the " Art Po^tique," canto iv., line 130.) The continual com- 
plaints of Corneille, both in prose and verse, reiterate almost in the same 
words the substance of this answer, which Pere Tournemine indignantly 
denies, but without bringing any proof to the contrary. How, he asks, 
can such a sentiment have been attributed to Corneille, " who is known to 
have carried his indiflFerence for money almost to blamable carelessness ; 
who never gained from his pieces anything but what the actors gave him, 
without making any bargains with them; who allowed a year to elapse 
without thanking M. Colbert for the renewal of his pension ; who lived 
without expense and died without property % " (See the '' Defense du 
gi-and Corneille," in vol. i. p. 81 of his Works.) A " blamable careless- 
ness " for money is quite compatible with pressing wants, which compel a 
man afterwards to solicit too vehemently that which he had disdained too 
negligently. " M. Corneille," says Fontenelle, " had more love for money 
than ability or application in amassing it." No man feels greater indigna- 
tion that his wants are not all supplied than he who cannot himself provide 
for them by prudence or activity. Much has been said of the disinterested- 
ness and fraternal affection which, until the death of Pierre Corneille, led 
the two brothers to consider all they possessed common property, and 
united both families into one. I have no wish to deprive praiseworthy 
conduct of the merit of a good motive or a fine feeling, though this merit 
is more common than is generally believed ; but I will just observe that 
this disinterestedness does not in the slightest degree contradict the notion 
that has been transmitted to us of Corneille's neglect of his pecuniary 
affairs, nor, consequently, of the natural results of such neglect. See 
Appendix F. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. ^67 

the reputation he had gained by his writings, he 
quietly rephed : " I am not the less Pierre Corneille." 
Just in the same manner, he frankly said to the 
world that Pierre Corneille had a right to expect 
better treatment. His wounded pride is always 
uppermost in his complaints, and — 

" L'ennui de voir toujours des louanges frivoles 
Rendre a ses grands travaux paroles pour paroles," 

appeared to him to be nothing more than 

" Ce legitime ennui qu'au fond de I'ame excite 
L'excusable fierte d'un peu de vrai m^rite." 

Thus he explains himself in an Epistle to Fouquet, 
inserted at the beginning of " CEdipe/' This epistle 
conv^eyed his thanks to the superintendent, for what 
favour it is not known ; but this favour was a recol- 
lection, and, there is reason to believe, made up for 
long neglect. Revived by this mark of esteem, 
Corneille desired nothing more than to resume his 
pen. Fouquet, "the superintendent," as he says, 
" not less of literature than of the finances,'^ ^ proposed 
to him three subjects for a tragedy ; Corneille made 
his choice, and, in 1 659, "(Edipe " appeared. But 
the simple beauties of Grecian antiquity were not 
destined to arouse a genius which had achieved its 
glory and perfected its growth among the ideas and 
mental idiosyncracies of the seventeenth century. 

' See Appendix G. 



268 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Corneille congratulated himself on having introduced, 
into the terrible subject of CRdipus, " the happy 
episode of the loves of Theseus and Dirce/' upon 
which he has concentrated all the interest of the 
drama. "This has deprived me," he says, "of 
the advantage which I hoped to gain, of being 
frequently only the translator of those great men 
who have preceded me. But as I have chosen 
another course, I have found it impossible to fall in 
with them.'^ He further informs us that he had the 
honour of obtaining an avowal from most of his 
auditors, " that he had written no dramatic piece 
which contained so much art as this/' ^ This unfor- 
tunate art, which is now forgotten, was then crowned 
with success ; at all events, " (Edipe '' did not fall 
before the judgment of the public, and the Court, 
which probably only sought, by rewarding him, to 
adorn itself with a glory it had too long neglected, 
manifested its satisfaction by conferring new favours 
upon Corneille.^ In 1661, on the occasion of the 
marriage of Louis XIV., he wrote the "Toison d'Or," 
a kind of opera, preceded by a prologue, into which 
the peace which had just been concluded gave him 
an opportunity to introduce some noble lines on 
the misfortunes of war. In 1662, an admirable 
scene in " Sertorius " rekindled for a moment the 
hopes of Corneille's partisans. It was, it is said, 

^ See the Preface to " (Edipe." 2 ibid. 



PIEERE CORNEILLE. 269 

on hearing these Hnes, addressed by Sertorius to 
Pompey — 

" Si dans I'occasion je menage un pen mieux ' 
L'assiette du pays et la faveur des lieux," 

that Turenne exclaimed — " Where did Corneille learn 
the art of warV In 1663, "Sophonisbe" failed 
before the recollection of Mairet's piece of the same 
name, and not, as Saint-Evremond asserted, because 
Mairet, by depicting Sophonisbe as unfaithful to an 
old husband for the sake of a young lover, " had hit 
upon the taste of the ladies and the folks at court." ^ 
In 1664, "Othon" appeared; it contained four 
lines which have continued celebrated, ^ and a few 
traces of that firmness in the treatment of political 
interests and court intrigues which was then to be 
found in Corneille alone. " We must beHeve,'' says 
Fontenelle, " that ' Agesilas ' ^ is by M. Corneille, 
because his name is attached to it3 and there is one 
scene between Agesilaus and Lysander which could 
not easily have been written by any one else/^* By 
the production of " Attila,'' Corneille, to use his 
nephew's expression, " braved the opinion of his age, 
the taste of which, he perceived, was turning entirely 
towards the most passionate and least heroic love." ^ 
Though we may not agree with Fontenelle in con- 
sidering the development of this tragedy to have been 

1 Saint-Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. iii. p. 141. 

2 See p. 261. ^ Published in 1666. 

* Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," p. 112. ^ Ibid. p. 116. 



270 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" one of the finest things that Corneille ever did/' we 
may recognise in it some traits of his pecuHar vigour ; 
among others that well-known line on the decay of 
the Roman Empire and the commencement of the 
kingdom of the Franks : — 

" Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s'ackdve." 

But the scenes between Attila and the capricious 
Honorie are far more suggestive of the idea of a 
quarrel between a ridiculous tutor and his unruly 
pupil, than of that " noble ferocity '' which Fontenelle 
is pleased to attribute to the monarch of the Huns. ^ 

A famous epigram by Boileau is connected with 
the production of the two last-mentioned pieces ; ^ but 
it has no other merit than that of expressing vrith 
considerable correctness the feeling of sorrow univer- 
sally experienced at beholding, in " Agesilas," the 
decay into which a great man might fall, and in 
" Attila," how important it was to the glory of 
Corneille that his efforts should there end. His name, 
nevertheless, was still powerful. Moliere chose him to 
versify his "Psyche," which he had not time to complete 
himself ; and Quinault, though already well-known, 
was entrusted only with the interludes. Corneille 

1 " There prevails throughout this piece a noble ferocity which he alone 
could delineate." Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," p. 116. 
2 " Apres I'Ag^silas, 
H^las ! 
Mais apres I'Attila, 
Hoik." 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 271 

was also selected by Queen Henrietta of England 
to measure his strength against that of Racine upon 
a subject devoted to the description of the pangs of 
love. This subject — "Berenice," with which, it is said, 
tender recollections were associated, ^ — was treated 
by each poet without the knowledge of the other. 
" Who will gain the victory ? — the youngest '? '^ says 
Fontenelle, forgetting that it was the great and old 
Corneille who gave the greatest empire to love and 
the most weakness to a Roman, as his Titus proposes 
to Berenice to renounce his kingdom for her sake ^ — 
an idea which Racine's Titus disdainfully rejects. ^ 
Finally, " Pulcherie '^ and " Surena ^' appeared, not- 
withstanding their defects, to revive the recollection 



^ The affection which Louis XIV. and Henrietta of England had felt for 

each other, and. which they had sacrificed to the dictates of reason rather 

than to those of virtue. 

2 " Eh bien ! Madame, il faut renoncer k ce titre 
Qui de toute la terre en vain me fait I'arbitre ; 
Aliens dans vos Etats m'en donner un plus doux : 
Ma gloire la plus haute est celle d'etre a vous. 
Allons oil je n'aurai que vous pour souveraine, 
Oil vos bras amoureux seront ma seule chaine, 
Ou I'Hymen en triomphe h jamais I'etreindra : 
Et soit de Rome esclave et maitre qm voudra ! " 

It is to be regretted that this last line was not introduced upon a worthier 

occasion. 

^ " * * * Je dois moins encore vous dire 
Que je suis pres, pour vous, d'abandonner I'empire, 
De vous suivre, et d'aller, trop content de mes fers, 
Soupirer avec vous au bout de I'univers. 
Vous-meme rougiriez de ma Mche conduite ; 
Vous verriez ii regret marcher h votre suite 
Un indigne empereur, sans empire, sans cour, 
Vil spectacle aux humaina des foiblesses d'amour." 

Racine, " B^r^nice," act v, scene 6. 



272 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

of that firm and imposing grandeur which Corneille 
had imparted to our tragedy ; and this fine saying 
of Eurydice, on learning that the death of her lover 
has been caused by her obstinacy, 

" Non, je ne pleure point, Madame, mais je meurs," 

formed a noble termination to the poet's career — 

" Et son dernier soupir fut un soupir illustre." 

Corneille was then nearly seventy years of age. 
Looking backwards, he could say with just pride, " I 
have finished my course ; my destiny as a superior 
man is accomplished ; whatever 1 was capable of 
doing I have done ; the rank that I was worthy to 
obtain I have obtained ; nothing more remains for 
me to desire/' But few men can thus lay down for 
themselves the limits of their existence — can con- 
template themselves only in the past which has so 
fully belonged to them, and acknowledge the justice 
of that dispensation of Providence which allots to each 
of us the time that each is to enjoy. Corneille, 
who had so long been in possession of undisputed 
superiority, could not tranquilly behold the rising- 
glory of his successors. He regarded both Moliere 
and Racine with dissatisfaction. " Sometimes," says 
Fontenelle, " he placed too little confidence in his own 
rare merit, and believed too easily that it was possible 
for him to have rivals." ^ Nevertheless, swayed more 

1 Fontenelle, " Vie de Corneille," p. 126, 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. ^73 

by timidity than envy, he regretted the triumphs of 
a rival less than he feared that his own triumphs 
would be forgotten ; and on being told, in 1676, that 
three of his plays had been performed at Court, he 
exclaimed — 

" Est-il vrai, grand monarque, et puis-je me vanter 
Que tu prennes plaisir k me ressusciter ? 
Qu'au bout de quarante ans, Cinna, Pomp^e, Horace, 
Reviennent h, la mode, et repreunent leur place 1 " 

Corneille now began to think he might die, and 
felt exceedingly anxious for a little popularity ; the 
grief of his failures seemed almost to have extin- 
guished in him the remembrance of his successes. 
His feeling of the state of abandonment into which he 
believed he had fallen is depicted, in a manner which 
fills us with sympathy for the old age of a great man, 
in some lines in which he implores the favour of 
Louis XIV. for his last works : — 

" Acheve : les derniers n'ont rien qui deg^nere, 

Rien qui les fasse croire eufans d'un autre p&re ; 

Ce sont des malheureux dtouffes au berceau, 

Qu'un seiil de tes regards tireroit du tombeau. 
* * * * * 

' Ag^silas ' en foule auroit des spectateurs, 
Et ' B^r^nice ' enfin trouveroit des acteurs. 
Le peuple, je Tavoue, et la cour les d^gradent ; 
Je foiblis, ou du moins ils se le persuadent : 
Pour bien dcrire encor j'ai trop long-temps ^crit, 
Et les rides du front passent jusqu'a 1' esprit. 
Mais, contre cet abus, que j'aurois de suffrages 
Si tu donnois les tiens k mes derniers ouvrages ! 
Que de tant de bont(5 I'imp^rieuse loi 
Rameneroit bientot et peuple et cour vers moi ! 
Tel Sophocle k cent ans charmoit encore Ath^nes, 
Tel bouillonnoit encor son vieux sang dans sps veinea, 
Diroient-ils k I'envi. " * * * * " 

T 



274 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Corneille's jealousy was like that of a child who 
requires a smile for himself whenever any caresses 
are bestowed upon his brother. This weakness led 
him to see cause for disquietude in every event, and 
to regard the slightest circumstance as an object of 
dread. " He was melancholy/' says Fontenelle, " and 
he required more soHd subjects for hope or rejoicing, 
than for grief or fear. His incapacity for business 
was equalled only by his aversion to it ; and the most 
trivial affairs caused him alarm and terror." ^ 

At home, " his humour was hasty, and apparently 
rough sometimes ; but, on the whole, he was very 
easy-tempered, a good father, a good husband, a good 
relative- — tender, and full of friendship." ^ In society, 
he was by turns haughty and humble, proud of his 
genius, but incapable of deriving any authority from 
it. At the close of his life, this weakness of his 
character was greatly increased by the successive 
decay of his bodily organs. Corneille survived the 
loss of his faculties for a year, and died on the 1st of 
October, 1684, at the age of seventy-eight. 

He was the senior member of the French Academy, 
into which he was admitted in 1647. He had 
presented himself for admission in 1644 and in 1646 ; 
but the statutes of the Academy had pronounced him 
ineligible, because he did not reside in Paris. In 1644, 
the Advocate-General Salomon was elected in pre- 

i Fonienelk, "Vie de Corneille," pp. 125, 126. - Ibid. 



PIERRE CORNEILLE. 275 

ference to him, and in 1646, Durjer, the tragic poet. 
" The register in this place," says Pehsson, in reference 
to this second nomination, " mentions the resolution 
which the Academy had adopted always to prefer, of 
two persons who each possessed the necessary quali- 
fications, that one who was resident in Paris." ^ 
When Corneille had removed this obstacle by fixing 
his residence in Paris during a great part of the 
year, no rival ventured to contest his claim. 
Balesdens, a distinguished advocate attached to the 
service of Chancellor Seguier, the protector of the 
Academy, offered himself for admission, but on being 
informed that Corneille was also a candidate, " he 
wrote to the Academy a letter filled with comphments 
to it, and also to M. Corneille, whom he prayed the 
company to prefer to him, protesting that he deferred 
the honour to him as being his due by all sorts of 
reasons." ^ On the death of Corneille, the Abbe de 
Lavau, then director of the Academy, and Racine, the 
director-elect, both claimed the right of paying him 
the honours granted by the Academy to the memory 
of each of its members. The Abba's claim was allowed, 
and Benserade, who excelled in the art of expressing 
pleasant truths, said to Racine, " If any one had a 
right to inter M. Corneille it w^as you, and you have 
not done it." Three months afterwards, Racine made 
up for his disappointment by pronouncing at the 

' Pelisson, " Histoire de rAcaddmie," p. 362. -^ Ibid., p. 364. 

T 2 



276 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

reception of Thomas Corneille, who succeeded to his 
brother's seat in the Academy, a splendid panegyric 
of Pierre Corneille, equally remarkable for its subject, 
its eloquence, and its orator. 

■ Racine was Corneille's eulogist and Voltaire his 
commentator. The genius of both judges is pledge 
of their good faith ; but Voltaire's genius bore little 
resemblance to that of Corneille, and this dissimilarity 
has sometimes interfered with that justice which one 
great man loves to render to another. The poet of 
the tender and violent passions did not always feel 
his heart open to those beauties which dry our tears ; 
the favourite of the elegant world of the eighteenth 
century was unable to overcome his repugnance to 
the coarse incoherencies of a taste which Corneille was 
the first to form ; in short, the haste of too easy and 
sometimes too careless a labour has introduced, into 
Voltaire's commentary, a sufficient number of errors 
of fact ^ to make us presume the existence of those 
errors of judgment which are, in reality, so apparent. 

^ I will quote only two instances : — When Felix, in " Polyeucte," has 
unfolded to his conMant, Albin, the coward hopes which are kindled 
within him by the dangerous position of Polyeucte, he adds : — 
" Mais que plMot le ciel k tes yeux me foudroye 
Qu a de pensers si bas je puisse consentir, 
Que jusque-lk ma gloire ose se d^mentir ! " 
Albin replies : — 

•' Votre coeur est trop bon et votre ame trop haute." 
Upon which Voltaire makes this reflection : — " Felix at least says that he 
detests such base thoughts, and we can partially forgive him ; but can we 
forgive Albin for saying that his soul is too lofty ? " 

Can we forgive Voltaire himself for having so strangely misapprehended 



PIERKE COEXEILLE. 277 

B J bestowing a little more attention on the work, and 
showing a little less complacency for petty passions, 
he would ha 70 given excellence to a work which, 
notwithstanding its frequentl}^ minute, and sometimes 
excessive, severity, is on the whole, by the abundance, 
justness, delicacy, and perspicuity of the observations 
which it contains, a model of literary criticism. 
Yoltaire desired to perform an act of justice and 

the meaning of this answer of Albin, who is represented throughout the 
piece as an honest and sensible man, who courageously defends Pauline and 
Polyeucte against his master, to whom he is continually showing the 
absurdity of his fears ? When Felix, with whom Severe, in compliance 
with Pauline's entreaty, has been interceding on behalf on Polyeucte, says 
to his confidant : 

'•' Albin, as-tu bien vu la fom-be de Severe ? 
As-tu bien vu sa haine, et vois-tu ma misere ? " 

Albin replies, with the indignation of a reasonable man : 

'•' Je n'ai vu rien en lui qu'un rival genereux ; 
Je ne vois rien en vous qu'un pere rigoureux." 

A moment afterwards he adds : 

" Grdee, grace, seigneur ! que Pauline I'obtienne." 

On another occasion he represents the danger to which he will expose him- 
self by putting Polyeucte to death, both from the people and from the 
Emperor. Indeed, the character which Albin displays throughout the 
Ijiece is manifested in the line to which Voltaire objects ; it will be evident 
to those who read it, I will not say with attention, but without prejudice, 
that Albin's answer means simply this : '• Your heart is too kind and your 
soul too lofty to allow you to stoop to such base cowardice ; " and it is 
plain that he only alludes to Felix's loftiness of soul to prevent him from 
stooping to too gi'eat degradation. 

In " OEdipe," which, in truth, may excuse the inattention of the commen- 
tator, mention is made of a certain Phoedime. who had just died of the 
plague, and to whose care the son of Laius was entrusted. Voltaire, 
misled by the name, speaks of this person as a woman : — "Phoedime knew 
who this child was, but she is dead of the plague." This error would not 
be worthy of correction if it did not tend to prove the carelessness of the 
commentator. Such examples might be multiplied to almost any extent. 



278 PIERRE CORNEILLE. 

kindness to the name and family of Corneille ; and it 
is much to be deplored that, yielding to the natural 
weaknesses of his mind and character, he did not 
conceive and execute his design with sufficient care 
and conscientiousness to render it a monument worthy 
both of Corneille and of himself 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 

(1595—1674.) 



At once a poet and a critic, — admired as a poet 
during his lifetime, at least until the publication of 
the " Pucelle," and revered as a critic by his contem- 
poraries, even after his death, — Jean Chapelain may 
be taken as the faithful representative of the taste 
of an age of which he was the oracle. Even when 
readers ceased to admire his poems, they did not 
charge them with having beUed his principles, and 
his authority in the literary world was in no degree 
diminished by the disfavour with which his poetry 
was regarded. To his writings, therefore, we must 
look for information as to what was known and 
thought in reference to poetical art, in the early part 
of the seventeenth century : and as the judge of 
Corneille and predecessor of Boileau, Chapelain is 
deserving of attention. 

Jean Chapelain, the son of a Paris notary, was 
born on the 4th or 5th of December, 1595. His 
father's profession would have well suited his peaceful 



280 coeneille's contemporaries. 

and prudent character, and his gentle, sedate, and 
orderly mind ; but " if his star, at his birth," had 
not " formed him a poet," he was, at all events, 
predestined to write verses. His mother was a 
daughter of Michel Corbiere, the friend of Ronsard. 
Her youth had been impressed, and her imagination 
was still filled, with admiration for the " Prince of 
Poets ;" she coveted the same glory for a son whose 
precocity of intellect was highly flattering to the 
hopes of her maternal pride ; and if she had been 
satisfied with wishing her son the destiny of Ronsard, 
unaccompanied by his talent, her desires were fulfilled 
to a far greater extent than she had ventured to 
hope. Chapelain, " the King of Authors " ^ as long 
as he lived, and celebrated after his death as the 
model of unreadable poets, seems, like a dutiful son, 
to have undertaken the task of accomplishing the 
destiny which his mother had marked out for him. 
His studies were pursued with direct reference to the 
career for which he was intended ; and one of his 
masters was Nicolas Bourbon, a celebrated Latin poet 
of that time, who entertained so profound a contempt 
for French verses that, w^hen he read them, it 
seemed to him, he said, as if he were drinking water, 
— which was, in his opinion, the worst of insults.*^ 

^ " Comme roi des auteurs qu'ou I'eleve a I'empire." 

Boileau, Satire ix., line 219. 
2 With all his taste for good wine and good cheer, Nicolas Bourbon was 
a miser ; in addition to his avarice, he was tormented by continual sleep- 
lessness; and from the union of these three dispositions, resulted a singular 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 281 

Being afterwards entrusted with the education of 
the two sons of the Marquis de la Trousse, Chapelain 
spent the seventeen years through which their 
education was continued in the study of poetics, or, 
at least, of all that was then known on that subject. 
An unpleasant joke confirmed him in his purely 
literary taste. The Marquis de la Trousse, who 
filled the office of Prevdt de Vhdtel, had given him, 
either before, or during the time that he was engaged 
in the education of his children, an appointment as 
archer of the provostry/ This post conferred the 
right, or rather the obligation, of wearing a sword, 
and the sword was not at all in harmony with 
Chapelain's character ; for men of letters, in those 
days, did not consider themselves bound to possess 
courage, and, of all men of letters, Chapelain was 
the most pacific. One of his acquaintance, by way 

infirmity, viz., that an invitation to dinner, given beforehand, caused him 
such agitation that he was unable to sleep, so that his friends were careful 
to invite him only on the day of the feast. — "Menagiana," vol. i. p. 315. 

^ An old manuscript copy of the " Chapelain ddcoifi"^," a well-known 
parody of a scene in the " Cid," contains these lines, which are quoted in 
the " Menagiana," vol. ii. pp. 78, 79, but which were afterwards altered ; — 

CHAPELAIN. 

" Tout beau ! j'etois archer, la chose n'est pas feinte ; 
Mais j'etois un archer a la casaque peinte : 
Mon juste-au-corps de poui-pre et mon bonnet fourre 
Sont encore les atours dont je me suis par(^; 
Hoqueton diapre de mon maitre La Trousse, 
Je le suivois h, pied quand il marchoit en housse, 

LA SERUE. 

Recors inipitoyaVjle et recors cternel, 
Tu trainois au cachet le pale crimincl." 



282 corneille's contemporaries. 

of diversion, proposed to him to act as second in a 
duel. Chapelain declined ; but, renouncing thence- 
forward an ornament which was dangerous unless 
useless, he laid aside his sword and resigned his 
office as archer, and never resumed them. As he 
possessed greater qualifications for employments 
which required probity and capacity than for those 
which called for resolute firmness of soul, he was 
entrusted with the administration of the affairs of 
the Marquis de la Trousse. 

Whilst he was engaged in the education of the 
young Seigneurs de la Trousse, and was seeking for 
poetical talent in the study of the rules of poetry, 
there arrived in Paris the Chevalier Marini, with 
his poem the " Adone,'' which he intended to have 
printed, and upon which he was desirous of obtaining 
the opinions of the wits of France. Chapelain, though 
he had as yet produced nothing, was already highly 
esteemed by men of letters for his literary knowledge. 
Those to whom Marini applied, Malherbe among the 
number, wished to know his opinion ; and the Italian 
poet, alarmed by his criticisms, requested him to 
furnish a preface which might disarm further attacks 
on the part of the public. This preface, in the form 
of a letter to M. Favereau, was printed at the 
beginning of the " Adone,"^ and is a curious specimen 
of the criticism of that period. Some few reasonable 

^ In the folio edition published at Paris in 1623. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 283 

ideas, taken, in the form of quotations, from the 
writings of the ancients, overwhelmed by a host of 
arbitrary divisions and sub-divisions, expressed in 
almost unintelligible French, the Gaulish barbarism 
of which was highly suggestive of the style de 
notaire^ were the materials upon which Chapelain's 
reputation was built. This reputation, however, 
was sufficient to gain for him the attention and favour 
of Richelieu. An ode to the Cardinal bore witness at 
once to the gratitude of the poet and to his poetical 
talents ; and from that time forth no further difficulty 
was felt about the choice of a successor to Malherbe/ 
Since the death of Chapelain, this ode has 
frequently been spoken of as worthy to secure him 
an inffiiitely more honourable reputation than that 
which he gained by the " Pucelle." His panegyrists 
neA'^er mention it without expressions of admiration ; 
and we are assured that Boileau admitted that 
Chapelain " had once written a rather fine ode — how 
I cannot tell," he used to add.^ I am quite at a loss 
to account for this opinion of Boileau. Doubtless 
surprised that the author of the " Pucelle '' could 
have produced any verses of average excellence, 

* " M. Chapelain seemed to have succeeded to the reputation of Malherbe, 
after the death of that author ; and it was loudly published thoughout 
all France that he was the piince of French poets. This appears by the 
testimonies of various persons who observed what was said during the 
ministry of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin." Baillet, " Jugements des 
Savants," vol. v. p. 278, edit. 1722. 

* " Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 73. 



284 coeneille's oontempokaries. 

written clearly and correctly, and free from 
harshness or bad taste, Boileau rather exaggerated 
the marvellous character of this prodigy. Perhaps, 
also, taking the ode on the " Capture of Namur " 
into consideration, we may be permitted to doubt 
whether the author of the " Art Poetique " had a 
truly just and vivid feeling of that which constitutes 
the beauty of an ode. The most scrupulous attention 
has not enabled me to discover, in Chapelain's 
performance, the slightest trace of poetic fire, or 
even of that nobility of thought of which we 
sometimes catch a glimpse through the uncouth style 
of the " Pucelle." Its progress is cold and didactic ; 
the poet, confessing himself incapable of worthily 
celebrating the praises of his hero, limits his 
endeavours to the repetition of what is said of him : 

" Le long des rives du Permesse, 
La troupe de ses nourrissons," ^ 

and this frigid conception leads to the still more 
frigid repetition of the words, lis cJiantent, with 
which he commences six strophes in succession. 
Poetry is as undiscoverable in the imagery as in the 
ideas. Balzac bestowed great praise upon the lines 
in which, to tranquillise the modesty of Richelieu, 
who thinks he is indebted solely to the King his 
master for his knowledge and magnificence, the 

^ The entire ode is given in the " Eecueil des phis belles pieces des 
poetes Fran9ais," vol. iv. p. 181. 



JEAX CHAPELAIX. 285 

poet compares him to the pole-star, the guide of the 
pilot : — 

" Qui brille sur sa route et gouveme ses voiles, 
Cependant que la lune, accomplissant son tour 
Dessus un char d'argent en^i^onn^ d'etoiles, 
Dans le sombre vmivers represente le jour." ^ 

The poet celebrates the " Hght ^' of the renown of 
Richeheu, which, he says, is " ever pure," notwith- 
standing the attempts of calumny to darken it : — 

" Dans un paisible niouvement 
Tu t'eleves au firmament, 
Et laisses contre toi murmurer sur ]a terre. 
Ainsi le haut Olympe, k son pied sablonneux, 
Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre . 
Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux." 

As regards the appropriateness of his ideas and 
his selection of subjects of praise, an example is 
supplied by this strophe, which is really curious 
when we consider that it was addressed to Cardinal 
Richelieu : — 

•' Ton propre bonheur fimportune 

Alors qu'il fait des malheureux: 

On voit que tu souffres pour eux, 

Et que leur peine t'est commune. 

Quand lem-s efiforts sent impuissans 

Contre tes acts innocens, 
Dans leur d^sastre encor ta bont^ les revere ; 
Tu les plains dans les maux dont ils sont affligds, 
Et demandes au ciel, d'un co3ur humble et sincere, 
Qulls veuillent seulement en etre soularre^." 

When flattery thus boldly assumes the character 
of falsehood, it becomes a conventional language, 
equally applicable to all men, which, not allowing 
the poet the choice of any feature peculiar to his 

^ "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 73. 



286 corneille's contemporaries. 

hero, casts him without resource into the common- 
places of adulation. Without doing too much 
honour to flattery, it is permissible to believe that, 
for it to be clever, it must at least have some slight 
connection with truth. 

I attach no personal blame, however, to Chapelain 
for the singular eulogies which he has lavished on 
his protector. Such was then the general tone of 
praise, arising rather from want of taste and tact 
than from any baseness especially belonging to that 
epoch in the life of courts. A sort of unskilfulness 
in the treatment of falsehood, by forcing it to appear 
in its coarsest guise, also compelled truth to display 
itself occasionally under harsh and peremptory 
forms. Eichelieu himself had to endure some 
sallies of this inconvenient candour ; and even men 
of letters, though bound to him by the ties of 
necessity and gratitude, rarely feared to maintain 
in private those opinions which they deemed 
reasonable, in opposition to that all-powerful minister 
upon whom, in public, they unhesitatingly lavished 
the most absurd praises. In the affair of the " Cid," 
Corneille and the Academy, with Chapelain at its 
head, courageously asserted their right of opinion 
against the declared will of the Cardinal : and on a 
less public occasion, the " most circumspect " 
Chapelain, as he was called by Balzac,^ whose 

^ " Menagiana/' vol. iii. p. 73. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 287 

temerity he had frequently censured/ firmly 
maintained his own opinion against one of those 
ideas to which a man of Richelieu's character would 
be likely to cHng most tenaciously. Being appointed, 
together with several other literary men, to amuse the 
CardinaFs leisure by literary discussions, Chapelain 
had forwarded to Bois-Robert, the usual intermediary 
in correspondence of this kind, a lengthy and 
Tery reasonable criticism of Cardinal Bentivoglio's 
" History of the Wars of Flanders." In this letter, 
remarkable for a liberality of ideas which was rare 
for his time, but which would, perhaps, have been 
even more bold and extraordinary fifty years later, 
Chapelain insisted strongly upon the impartiality 
which a historian ought to maintain in reference to the 
various religious creeds. " Vice and virtue,'^ he says, 
" are two foundations upon which all are agreed, and 
which admit of no contradiction. The true religion, 
which ought much rather to possess this privilege, is 
not so fortunate ; each man calls his own the best ; 
and you prove nothing to an enemy of different 
creed when you derive your arguments and means of 
attack from the falsity of that which he believes. 
This is why I hold that the judicious historian, w^ho 
wishes to be of service to the public, should not take 
his reasons from such sources, because they are sure 



' See the " Melanges de Litt^rature, tir^s des lettres manuscritcs de 
M. Chapelain," p. 63, 64, edit. 1726. 



288 corneille's contemporaries. 

not to meet with general approbation." ^ He also 
blamed Cardinal Bentivoglio for his partiality 
towards the Spaniards, the oppressors of the 
Netherlands. Richelien expressed himself satisfied 
with this letter, but declared against its author's 
opinion that " the historian ought to have nothing to 
do with judging the facts which he relates." ~ As 
firm on a point of literary criticism as any great 
Scholar would be on a point of erudition, Chapelain 
replied to Bois-Robert : — " I esteem myself very 
unfortunate in not being as completely of his 
Eminence's opinion on this subject, as I am and 
always wish to be in all things ; " and after making 
suitable apologies, he declares himself as positively 
for the afiirmative as the Cardinal for the negative, 
and developes his views at - considerable length, 
basing them upon very sound reasons. The most 
singular circumstance in connection with the matter, 
is that, during the whole course of the discussion, 
Chapelain looks solely to the interest which the 
Cardinal took in the question as a mere reader of 
history, and never at that w^hich he would be likely 
to feel in it as an historical personage. Flattery, 
which might here have found a fine field for displa}^, 
alludes only to the angelic constitution of Mon- 
seigneur's mind,^ which rendered useless to him that 

^ See the " Melanges de Litt^rature, tir^s des lettres manuscrites de 
M. Chapelain," pp. 101—116. 

2 ibi<3, p_ 123, ef seq. ^ Ibid. p. 138. 



JEAN CHAPELAIJs\ 289 

assistance and information with which the weakness 
of the vulgar could not dispense. Was this the 
simplicity of a man of letters, or the address of a 
consummate courtier ? We are too far distant both 
from the man and the time to decide. 

In the performance of his duties as critic to the 
Cardinal, in which office he was associated with 
several other men of letters, Chapelain, who was 
really erudite and as judicious as the circumspect 
frigidity of his imagination could allow, naturally 
proved superior to all his colleagues ; and he therefore 
soon exceeded them in favour. It was not, however, 
until the administration of Colbert that he was 
entrusted with that special mission which established 
his sway, if not over literature, at least over men 
of letters : but, under the government of Richelieu, 
the favour which he enjoyed was sufficiently great 
to induce them to attach considerable weight to 
his authority; and, even including Boileau, who com- 
plained of it only as a man of taste, his dominion 
over the literary world was generally acknowledged. 

In the year 1632, he had refused to accompany 
the Duke de Noailles to Rome, in the capacity of 
secretary of legation. Thenceforward, attached to 
the service of the Cardinal,^ from whom he received 

His first letter, on Cardinal Bentivoglio's book, is dated December 10, 
1631 ; and it is rather singular that the second is dated only on the 9th 
of June, 1633. Probably Bois-Robert, the intermediary through whom 
this correspondence passed, only communicated the letters to the Cardinal 
when a good opportunity occurred. 




290 coeneille's contempoearies. 

a pension of a thousand crowns/ Chapelain naturally 
preferred, to the labour of a subordinate position, 
that kind of independence which, in the opinion of a 
literary man, specially consists in liberty to dispose of 
his time as he pleases. From this leisure, after long 
and painful efforts, resulted the " Pucelle/' The 
success of his preface to the " Adone " had con- 
vinced Chapelain of the infallibiHty of his literary 
knowledge ; he never suspected that the composition 
of a poem required something more than a perfect 
acquaintance with the rules of poetry, and few 
persons were then to be found who were any wiser 
than himself on this point. After mature thought, 
he considered himself called upon, when nearly 
forty years of age, to write an epic poem. He spent 
five years in the arrangement of its plan ; but we 
have not been informed how much time he devoted 
to the choice of his subject. This choice was 
certainly the happiest circumstance of his under- 
taking. The Duke de Longueville, a descendant of 

1 See the life of Chapelain in Lambert, " Histoire litt^raire du Si^cle de 
Louis XIV.," vol. ii. p. 361. The sum appears rather large. In 1663, 
Chapelain was appointed by Colbert to draw up a list of the literary men 
whom he deemed worthy to receive the benefits of the king, and received 
a pension of a thousand crowns from that minister. This distinction gave 
rise to the famous parody of " Chapelain d^coiffd," and was considered 
very extraordinary. (See the " Chapelain decoiff^," in the " ffiuvres de 
Boileau," vol. iii. p. 193, edit. 1772). Manage, speaking of the pension of 
two thousand livres granted to Chapelain by the Duke de Longueville, 
mentions it as "a great pension ; " and Pelisson (" Histoire de I'Acad^mie," 
p. 20,) simply tells iis that the Cardinal had manifested his esteem for 
Chapelain by giving him a pension. Lambert, a careless wi'iter, may have 
confounded the two dates. 



m>:5T": 



JEAK CHAPELim " 291 

Dunois, the bastard of Orleansj thought too much 
encouragement could not be bestowed upon a work 
which would add, to the glory of his family, all the 
renown that could be derived from the name and 
talents of such a man as Chapelain ; and a pension 
of two thousand livres,^ to last until the composition 
of the poem should be completed, contributed largely 
to the anticipative celebrity of a work so well 
remunerated. 

The twenty years spent by Chapelain in the 
composition of the first twelve cantos of his work, 
were twenty years of unmixed glory. The reputation 
of the poet ; the prestige derived from reading 
isolated passages, a sure means for an author to 
interest in his success those whom he appears to have 
chosen as his judges ; the lively curiosity always felt 
regarding that which is known only in part or by 
hearsay, — all united to concentrate universal interest 
upon this poem, which, though ever promised and 
incessantly shown in parts, seemed likely never to be 
given entire. The Duchess de Longueville alone, 
carried away by the general opinion, but enhghtened 

* " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 123. In a remark upon the 218th line of 
Boileau's 9th Satire : — 

" Qn'il soit le mieux rent^ de tons les beaux-esprits," 

Brossette, one of the editors of Boileau's works, tells us that this pension 
from M. de Longueville amounted to four thousand livres, and that it had 
then been doubled ; which agrees with what Manage says about the 
oinginal pension. Lambert raises it to a thousand crowns, like that 
granted bj' the Cardinal. 

u 2 



292 CORNEILLE^S CONTEMPOEARIES. 

by an instinct which did not incHne her usually to 
coincide with her husband's tastes, said in reference 
to those readings, which probably occupied more of 
her attention than she was willing to bestow upon 
them : " The poem is perfectly beautiful, but it is 
very tiresome." ^ 

No great importance was attached to this isolated 
opinion of a lady devoted to interests very different 
from those of literature, and whose taste might even 
be regarded with suspicion ; for in the famous duel of 
the sonnets, she had been almost alone in favour of 
Voiture's " Uranie " against Benserade's " Job/' 
For twenty years, nothing occurred to interrupt the 
pleasant security of the poet, or his expectation of the 
brilliant success which he believed himself destined 
to achieve. The desire to receive for a longer 
period the emoluments attached to his labour ^ 
induced him, it is said, to delay the enjoyments of 
publication and success ; but even this unfavourable 
judgment of Chapelain's probity allows the merit of 
rare moderation to his self-love. 

At length, he determined to enter the hsts which 
he considered so little to be feared. In 1656, the 

^ See the note on these lines of BoileaiCs third Satire : — 
" La Pucelle est encore une ocuvre bien galante, 
Et je ne sais pourquoi je b§,ille en la lisant." 

" "M. Chapelain," says Menage, "was so long in bringing out his 
' Pucelle ' only because he was paid a large pension by M. de Longueville. 
He feared that the prince would no longer care about him after he had 
published his work." *'Menagiana," vol. i. p. 123. 



JEAN CHAPELAIK. %^-S 

first twelve cantos of the " Pucelle " were publislied. 
Issuing at length from that limited circle which was 
formed around it by the literate few, and from which 
isolated rays of its glory had alone hitherto proceeded, 
it sought the suffrages of the general public. All 
might now judge what a few had pronounced worthy 
of unmingled admiration ; and probably gaining 
encouragement from the presence of the public, men 
of letters ventured for the first time to express an 
opinion which they had been afraid to pronounce so 
long as they were the only persons to support it.^ 
The promptitude of the attack justifies the pre- 
sumption that it was premeditated. " Three days 
after this so much extolled poem had been made 
public,'' says Vigneul-Marville, " a criticism of very 
small merit ^ having given it the first scratch, every 
one fell upon it, and the whole reputation of both 
the poem and the poet fell to the ground — a fall," 
adds Vigneul-Marville, " the greatest and most 
deplorable that has ever occurred, in the memory of 
man, from the top of Parnassus to the bottom." ^ 

^ He nevertheless had fervent admh'ers among the literary class. 
Sari-asin and Maynard had eulogised him in their poems ; and Godeau, the 
bishop of Vence, said to a man who was urging him to write an epic, 
that his voice was not strong enough to do so, " and that the bishop, on 
this occasion, yielded the supremacy to Chapelain." " Menagiana," vol. i. 
p. 31. 

2 I have been unable to discover this criticism, the obscurity of which 
is sufficiently evident from what Vigneul-Marville says of it. Segi-ais 
asserts that Despreaux was the first who shook off the yoke by his 
"Chapelain d^coiffd;" but this poem is dated in 1664, and Chapelain had 
not to wait so long for epigrams. 

3 Vigneul-Marville, " Melanges," vol. ii. p. 5. 



29^t corneille's contempoearies. 

The event, 'however, was not quite so dramatic as 
it is represented to have been by the imaginative 
author of the " Melanges/' The sale of six editions 
of these first twelve cantos in eighteen months, 
proved that considerable time was required for the 
demohtion of a reputation which had been so long 
accumulating. But all parties united in the attack ; 
entire collections of epigrams^ were published against 
the '^"Pucelle,'' and it became the usual butt for 
conversational witticisms. It was said that the 
"Pucelle," as long as she was kept by a great 
prince, had retained a sort of reputation, but that 
she had entirely lost it since she had become public 
property.^ The respect attached to the name of 
Chapelain disappeared, at least among men of letters ; 
and Furetiere remarking him by the side of Patru, 
said : " Voila un auteur pauvre etun pauvre auteur"^ 

Chapelain s friends did not desert him in these 
trying circumstances. They felt it incumbent upon 
them to maintain the honour of their approbation, 
and the Duke de Longueville was especially earnest 
in the work. He doubled the pension which he had 
bestowed on Chapelain ; and the avarice ascribed to 
the poet gives us reason to believe that so valuable 

* " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 125. 
- Ibid. vol. i. p. 123. This saying was thus versified : — 

"Depuis qu'elle parott et se fait voir au jour, 
Que chacun la prise a son tour, 
La Pucelle n'est plus qu'une fille publique." 

•'' "Menagiana," vol. i. p. 126. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 295 

a mark of esteem must have consoled liim for many 
criticisms. Others supported him with their pens and 
voices ; but, it must be confessed, the vigour of their 
defence was greatly modified by the astonishment 
into which they had been thrown by so unexpected 
a failure. Huet, the bishop of Avranches, the most 
intrepid of them all, merely asked that before judg- 
ment was pronounced, time should be allowed for 
the publication of the entire poem ; and he there- 
fore thought that the poet had done wrong to publish 
separately the first part, which was so ill calculated 
to ensure a favourable reception for the remainder. 
Saint-Pavin declared that the " Pucelle '' contained 
faults of so much beauty that its enemies would 
have been proud to commit them ; but, at the same 
time, he wrote this sonnet : — 

*' Je vous dirai sincerement 
Mon sentiment sur la Pucelle ; 
L'air et la grace natiu'elle 
S'y rencontrent ^galement. 

EUe s'explique fortement, 
Ne dit jamais de bagatelle, 
Et toute sa conduite est telle 
Qu'il faut la louer hautement. 

Elle est pompeuse, elle est paree ; 
Sa beautd sera de dur^e ; 
Son eclat pent nous ^blouir ; 

Mais enfin, quoiqu'elle soit telle, 
llarement on ira chez elle 
Quand on voudra se rcjouir." ' 



' " Recueil des plus belles pieces des poetes Franyais," vol. iv. p. 176. 
and vol. v. p. 152. 



T^t6 coeneille's contemporaries. 

This is a mere paraphrase of that saying of Mme. de 
Longueville which has been already quoted. Segrais, 
who, though but shghtly disposed in Chapelain's 
favour, was sufficiently addicted to admiration to 
discover inimitable passages in the " Pucelle," 
nevertheless confessed that it was not a good heroic 
poem. "But," he added, "have we any better? 
Does any one read the ' Clovis/ ^ or the * Saint- 
Louis,' ^ or others of the same kind?"^ No one 
dared to defend its style, and Chapelain himself 
confessed that he was not a good hand at writing 
verses ;* but he made this confession haughtily, 
considering so small a merit quite unworthy of his 
attention and of the notice of his judges. " As to 
versification and language," he says in his preface 
to his last twelve cantos, ^ " they are instruments of 
so little importance in the epic, that they do not 
merit the consideration of such great judges ; they 
are abandoned to the fury of the grammarian tribe, 
without gaining greater or less esteem by the 
approbation which they may receive from it, or 
by the hard blows which it may give them." He 
then goes on to declare that, " strictly con- 
sidered, the poem would not be less a poem if it 

^ By Saint- Amant. ^ gy pg;.g Zemoine. ^ " Segraisiana," p. 5. 

* Vigneul-Marville, " Melanges," vol. ii. p. 5. 

^ I have read this second part, which has never been printed, and 
which together with the Preface, exists in MS. in the National Library 
at Paris. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 297 

.were not written in verse ; " which seems to imply 
that it is none the worse for being written in bad 
verse. 

Chapelain, influenced by the first emotions of 
paternity, was desirous, it is said,^ to rush to the 
assistance of his offspring when thus violently 
attacked, and at all events to protect, by his talent 
as a critic, a work which his talent as a poet had 
failed to render capable of defending itself Second 
thoughts probably made him 'sensible that such aid 
would most likely be more dangerous than useful ; 
so he satisfied himself with labouring in silence at 
the continuation of his work, and reserved all his 
animadversions for that preface which I have already 
quoted, and in which — with the dignity of persecuted 
genius, challenging alike his friends and his enemies — 
he declares that " he takes nothing less than the 
universe for his stage, and eternity for his 
spectatress." 

Chapelain's eternity was of short duration, and 
the universe has not cared to liberate the last 
productions of his genius from the obscurity in 
which he himself allowed them to languish. Neither 
the last twelve books of the " Pucelle," nor their 
haughty preface, have ever been printed. Scarcely 
any one has even inquired about their existence ; 
and, within a few months, this unfortunate work 

' Vigneul-Mavvillt, '• Melanges," vol. ii. p. 5. 



298 



COKNEILLE S CONTEMPORARIES. 



verified the horoscope drawn of it by Liniere a few 
days before its appearance : — 



tihil 



" Nous attendons de Chapelain, 
Ce noble et fameux ecrivain, 
Une incomparable Pucelle. 
La cabale en dit force bien : 






^008 oi isbio ii 

Depiiis vingt ans on parle d'elle; y|y p/:J»fRffO 
Dans six mois on n'en dira rien.'" ^ 

■•ft Jsicl 
Few persons have felt sufficient interest in this 
literary event, which has left so few traces of its 
existence, to look to the work itself for the expla- 
nation of the double phenomenon of its astonishing- 
reputation and its fearful fall ; and if any persons 
have had the courage to attempt this examination, 
they have derived little pleasure from it. All 
popular favour is a fashion, and the empire of any 
particular fashion is as difficult of explanation as the 
wind, which blows in one direction to-day, but will 
change to-morrow. Perhaps, however, curious minds 
may take pleasure in learning from Chapelain's work 
the limit of the taste of a reasonable, erudite, and 
judicious man (for such, was the author of the 
" Pucelle "), when the way has not been opened to 
him by the taste of his contemporaries ; and when he 
does not possess, in order to precede his age, that 
inspiration which rises to truth by roads whose 
existence was not even suspected by the vulgar, 
until genius had revealed them to their eyes. We 



' " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 124, 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 299 

may learn from the " Pucelle," how necessary 
imagination is even to reason, when reason attempts 
to transgress the bounds of simple common sense ; 
and how indispensable it is to see far and quickly, 
in order to see always clearly and justly. 

Charles VII., the Maid of Orleans, Dunois, Agnes 
Sorel, the Duke of Burgundy and Bedford are the 
principal personages of Chapelain's poem. God and 
the angels, whom he employs to ensure success for the 
projects of the Maid, and frustrate the devil and his 
artifices in favour of the EngHsh — are the principal 
springs of the action. Charles VII. is certainly the least 
epic and least dramatic character that it would be pos- 
sible to imagine. Ever boasting of his warlike ardour, 
but never fighting ; getting angry with those who 
oppose his will, but never having a will of his own ; 
sometimes the very humble servant of the Maid, who 
leads him like a child ; sometimes the dupe of his 
favourite, the unworthy Amaury, who cheats him 
like a fool ; in love with Agnes when he sees her, 
and forgetting her as soon as she is out of his sight, 
— he incessantly changes his feehngs and resolutions, 
and passes from weakness to vigour, or from wrath to 
submission : so that nothing in his character excites 
the shghtest curiosity in reference to the consequences 
of a position which a new display of weakness will 
change as soon as it becomes too difficult to treat. 
The Maid, always impassible and always inspired,. 



300 corneille's contempoeaiues. 

sustains tolerably well the character ascribed to 
her ; but this character is a perpetual miracle : all 
her prayers are heard, and every one of her words is 
a decree from heaven, which overthrows all obstacles 
and dissipates all resistance. Sent by God, at the 
beginning of the poem, to the assistance of Orleans, 
which is already reduced to the last extremities, she 
leaves her native woods, arrives at the camp of the 
king, is listened to with respect, finds the army at 
her orders, and the court at her feet ; and all this 
is effected by the utterance of a few words. Orleans 
is delivered. The heroine flies from combat to 
combat, and always at a given point an angel comes 
down to decide in her favour a victory which the 
ever-defeated demon unceasingly attempts to gain 
over her. Amaury, a true terrestrial demon, enraged 
at the influence which the Maid has obtained, and 
fearful for the loss of his own, determines to recall, 
as an opponent to his formidable enemy, Agnes 
Sorel, whom the same jealousy of power had 
induced him to remove by his intrigues. On the 
invitation of Amaury, Agnes returns ; a look will 
restore to her her empire over the feeble Charles ; 
but the Maid appears, and utters a few stern words 
against Agnes ; upon which Charles casts down his 
eyes and turns away his head, and Agnes departs in 
indignation. When her first victories have opened 
the road to Rheims, the Maid desires to conduct 



JEAls^ CHAPELAIN. 301 

the king thither to be consecrated. The demon, ever 
on the watch, endeavours to disturb this triumphal 
march by inspiring " the soldiers with libidinous 
thoughts for shameless girls ;" but the Maid no 
sooner becomes aware of this than, passing from 
rank to rank, she — 

"Ecarte d'un clin-J'ceil ces crimineLs ohjets;" 

and twenty-two lines contain the entire narrative 
of this incident, the arrangement of which had 
exhausted all the genius and malice of the devil. 
With equal facility revolts are overcome, and the 
envious confounded. Nowhere does this marvellous 
girl find neither passions to repress nor obstinacy 
to conquer ; and the passions which she inspires 
give her no more trouble than those which rise in 
opposition against her. God, who here performs a 
part similar to that of Venus in the " u^neid,^' 
ordains that, in order better to help his favourite, all 
the leaders of Charles's army should fall in love 
with her — an idea all the more unfortunate as it 
exercises no influence whatever over the progress of 
the poem. Of all these amours, the only one which 
the poet has invested with any importance is that 
of Dunois ; but his respectful and reserved affection 
very properly ''poco spera, nulla chiede^' ^ and perhaps 
6ven does not desire much ; so that, forgotten almost 

^ " Hopes little, asks nothing." Taaso, " Gerusalemme liberata," Canto 
ii. stanza 15. 



m% corneille's contemporaries. 

as soon as it arose, it produces no other %WMi 
than to cause deep affliction to poor Marie, a rather 
interesting personage, but whose resignation and 
reserve cannot heat the chilly atmosphere by which 
she is surrounded. The ambitious and coquettish 
Agnes, casting herself into the arms of the Duke of 
Burgundy, whom she detests, in revenge for the 
indifference of Charles, whom she loves ; and the 
Duke of Burgundy, divided between his love for 
Agnes, his hatred of Charles, and his indignation 
against his humiliation by English tyranny — would 
seem to promise some agitation, some strife of 
passion : but these conflicts are of such short 
duration, and the resolutions which terminate them 
are so soon taken, that the imagination of the reader 
finds nothing in them to rest upon, and to break the 
series of battles, marches, and counter-marches, all 
producing similar results, and all related in the same 
tone, which, with the incidents already mentioned, 
fill up the first twelve books of the poem. At the 
end of the twelfth book, Dunois, who at the assault 
of Paris has leaped over the ramparts without being 
followed by his men, is taken prisoner by the 
English. At the same moment the demon turns 
against Amaury the arrow which the Maid had 
just shot against the enemy. Amaury dies of the 
wound ; and, after an inspection of the arrow, 
Charles, convinced that the Maid has killed his 



JEAX CHAPELAIN. 303 

favourite, bursts into violent anger and pronounces 
sentence of banishment against her, which terminates 
her mission and deprives her of her powers, which 
she may no longer employ in the service of a prince 
abandoned by God. Grieved, but resigned, she retires 
to the woods of Compiegne, but is soon forced, by the 
approach of the Enghsh, to take refuge in the town. 
The Enghsh then lay siege to Compiegne. Constrained 
by the prayers of the inhabitants, who reproach 
her with deserting them, after having attracted the 
English forces into their neighbourhood, the Maid 
resumes her arms, notwithstanding her repugnance 
to do so, and attempts a sortie, in which, though 
unsupported from on high, the recollection of her 
former prowess maintains her advantage for some 
time ; but at length the artifices of the demon induce 
those whom she is defending to abandon her, that 
they may save themselves ; and she is made prisoner 
and taken to Rouen. At this point Chapelain halts, 
for the first time, in his laborious career. 

The twelve cantos which follow, and which: I = 
have read in the manuscript, seem to indicate the 
fatigue occasioned by the violent efforts which pre- 
sided over the production of the first part. The action, 
by being less closely compacted together, and less 
crowded with events, though not more rich in develop- 
ment, gives breathing-time, and even sleeping-time, to 
the characters, whom the first part of the poem kept 



304 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

constantly on the alert. The Maid remains quietly 
confined in her prison, and nothing is said about her. 
Dunois is even more fortunate in his dungeon, where 
Marie has taken him under her care, and — 

" De sou long etendu sur de mollets coussins, 
N'est ni vu ni servi que de ses m^decins," 

and by Marie, " his physician as well as his lover." 
When his cure is effected, he is exchanged by the 
intervention of Bedford, who seeks to separate him 
from Marie, as he desires that she should marry 
his son Edward. The French hero now passes an 
idle life in a camp where there is no more fighting 
to be done, and which Agnes, who again appears as 
the principal personage at Court, as well as of the 
poem, has rendered a scene of love and amusement. 
Upon a new-comer devolves almost exclusively the 
task of giving movement to the action. This is 
Edward, the son of Bedford, just arrived from 
London. By a singular coincidence, Edward has 
exactly the same features and appearance as 
Hodolphe, the brother of the Maid, and her fellow- 
prisoner. Pretending that this young warrior has 
been miraculously delivered from prison, he presents 
himself to Charles under his name, and succeeds in 
obtaining the confidence of the king, whom he rules, 
as others have done, by making use of Agnes Sorel. 
He deceives Charles, betrays him, thwarts all his 
plans, and finally attempts to poison him. For this 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 305 

purpose he prepares an apple of monstrous size, of 
the same kind as those — 

•' Qu'en langage frmtier calleville on appelle." 

The king thinks it so beautiful that he desires Agnes 
to eat it — 

*' Et de Sucre en poussiere ^xn. nuage y r^pand." 

Both sugar and apple are poisoned ; so Agnes 
dies. The king at first wished to die with her, but 
suddenl}^ took consolation, according to his custom, 
being influenced by the advice of an angel, who 
even induced him to do penance for his amour. 
The demon, on his side, has at last succeeded in 
persuading the English to put the Maid to death, 
instead of adopting the opinion of Bedford, who 
wished to keep her as a hostage for the safety 
of his son. She, whose whole joy consists in the 
hope of martyrdom, guesses that the fatal moment 
is drawing near — 

" Et confoit de sa mort un aimable soupgon." 

Her trial occupies thirty lines, and her death, which 
is narrated with a little more detail, is as glorious 
as her life. Meanwhile the true Rodolphe really 
escapes from prison, comes to the Court of Charles 
to reclaim his name, and challenges and kills the 
traitor Edward in a duel. Dunois defeats and drives 
out the English : — 

" Et le combat finit faute de combattans." 

I pass over many incidents mentioned in the second 



306 



COENEILLE S CONTEMPOEAEIES. 



part of the poem, such as the enumeration of the fleet 
brought from England by the brave Talbot ; the 
long account of the naval victory gained by the 
Enghsh over the French, who endeavour to oppose 
their disembarkation ; the arrival in Paris of Henry, 
the young king of England ; his coronation and duel 
with Charles, which is interrupted by the traitorous 
interference of the English, when they behold their 
king about to fall ; the escape of the princess Marie 
whom Bedford wishes to force to marry his son ; and 
so forth. Nor shall I linger to explain the allegorical 
meaning which Chapelain claims to have given to his 
poem, " according to the precepts." ^ It is of little 
consequence to the opinion which may be formed of 
the talent of the poet that, in his work, France is 
supposed to represent " the soul of man, Charles 
the will, Agnes concupiscence, Dunois virtue, Joan 
of Arc divine grace," and so on. Chapelain had too 
much good sense for us to suppose, whatever he may 
say about it, that these fine allegories were really 
the object of his work, and he had more than enough 
wit to discover them afterwards ; they consequently 
exert no influence whatever upon the progress of the 
poem ; and, with the exception of a few romanesque 
springs of action, the general plan is reasonable 



^ He praises himself, in his Preface, for the care he has taken " to reduce 
his action to the viniversal, according to the precepts, and not to deprive 
it of allegorical meaning, by which poetry is made one of the chief 
instruments of architectonics." See the Preface to the first part of his 
poem. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 307 

enough. The sentiments scattered through the 
work would appear sufficiently natural if, through 
not giving them enough development, the poet did 
not constantly manifest them as far too weak to 
occasion the results which they effect. We might 
praise the unity of subject, which Chapelain has 
scrupulously observed, if he had added to it simplicity 
of action : but incapable, on account of the barrenness 
of his imagination, of deriving from the incidents 
which he brings on the stage, all the means of 
interest and effect with which they might be made to 
furnish him, he is obliged to multiply both means and 
incidents ; and, as he is equally incapable of giving 
them variety, he incessantly repeats the same ideas 
and the same details, and thus falls into confusion 
without avoiding monotony. 

It is in details especially that we discern how 
deficient the reason and taste of Chapelain were in 
imagination. There are two kinds of truths ; one, 
by which the poet ought to be sufficiently struck to 
select and render it ; the other, with which he ought 
to be sufficiently acquainted to take care to avoid it. 
Both kinds may sometimes happen to unite in the 
same objects: thus Racine, describing the ruin and 
desolation of Jerusalem, says : — 

" Et de Jerusalem I'herbe cache les murs ; 
Sion, repaire affreux de reptiles impure, 
Voit de son temple saint les pierres dispers^es." ' 



Racine, " Esther," act i. scene 4. 

X 2 



308 coeneille's contemporaries. 

Saint- Amant, on the other hand, gives the following 
representation of a building in ruins : — 

" Le plancher du lieu le plus hant 
Est tombe jusque dans la cave, 
Que la limace et le crapaud 
Soiiilleut de venin et de bave." ^ 

In both descriptions the objects are the same ; the 
only difference is in the circumstances chosen by the 
two poets. Chapelain will not, hke Saint- Amant, 
select a disagreeable or ridiculous truth in order to 
present it under a striking form ; but his perception 
of it will not be sufficiently clear to enable him to 
avoid it. He will not perceive, in his own inventions, 
all that other persons may discover in them ; and 
even the models which he imitates will not enlighten 
him. When Tasso represents the angel Gabriel 
preparing to appear before the eyes of Godfrey de 
Bouillon, he thus describes the operation by which 
the celestial spirit rendered himself visible to earthly 
eyes :- — 

" La sua forma invisibil d'aria cinse 
Ed al senso mortal la sottopose ; 
Umane membra, aspetto uman si finse ; 
Ma di celeste maesta il compose, 
Tra giovane e fanciullo eta confine 
Prese, ed orno di raggi il biondo crine." ^ 



* " Recueil des plus belles pieces des Poetes Fran9ais," vol. iii. p. 289. 
2 Fairfax's translation is as follows : — 

" In form of airy members fair embar'd, 

His spirits pure were subject to our sight: 
Like to a man in show and shape he far'd. 
Btit full of heavnly majesty and might, 
A stripling seem'd he thrice five winters old, 
And radiant beams adom'd his locks of gold." 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 309 

The same idea is thus treated by Chapelain. The 
Archangel Michael resolves to appear to Charles in 
the form of weeping France ; he descends from 
heaven, and — 

•' De la plus haute sphere aux plages les plus basses 
Vient fixer I'air mobile, en assembler des m.asses, 
Les meler, les umr et s'en former un corps 
Vuide par le dedans, et solide au dehors. 
De la France abattue il lui donne I'image, 
II lui donne son air, lui donne son corsage, 
Et dans son cave sein luy-meme s'enfermant, 
A ses membres divers donne le mouvement." ^ 

If we consider only the effect of these two pictures, 
who could believe that one was an imitation of the 
other ? Remark with what care and delicacy the 
Italian poet has retained, in his description, the 
vagueness necessary to a sketch which could not 
become too palpable without being altogether false. 
Is it the angel himself, or simply the form which he 
has assumed, which is about to become visible to us ? 
Tasso does not tell us ; this appearance does not 
belong to the angel, and yet it is not distinct from 
himself ; insensibly our imagination confounds the 
one with the other, and soon it will be not merely 
the figure, but the angel himself who will appear to 
us, and whose delicate features and floating locks we 
shall plainly recognise. Nothing of this would be 
positive enough for Chapelain ; he requires something 
more sensible and determinate ; and therefore, 

' Chxipelaiv, " La Pucelle," Canto vi. p. 190. 



310 corneille's contemporaries. 

separating very distinctly what Tasso has taken care 
to commingle, he makes his figure of France a large 
doll inside which the angel conceals himself, just as 
in an operatic transformation, and which he will put 
in motion with almost as much grace and naturalness 
as Punch displays under the influence of the strings 
held by his hidden director. That imagination must 
indeed be very insensible to truth and very 
inaccessible to ridicule, which is not at once struck 
with the falsity and absurdity of this image. 

Chapelain is equally unaware of the impropriety 
of certain clevernesses by which he attemps to 
disguise too palpable truths. Queen Christina of 
Sweden, displeased at his having censured, as too 
free, some lines which she had considered pretty, 
exclaimed : " Your M. Chapelain is a poor fellow ; 
he would wish everything to be maiden."^ It is 
singular enough that he carried out this fancy even 
in reference to Agnes Sorel ; but far more singular 
are the means by which the poet has attempted to 
dispel all the injurious thoughts that the reader 
might entertain with regard to the liaisons of Agnes 
with Charles VII. and the Duke of Burgundy. 
When recalled by Amaury, she presents herself to 
Charles with- the sole purpose of offering him " her 
arm and her courage ; " and when Amaury 
afterwards finds fault with the Maid for having 

* *'Meriagiana," vol. i. p. 140. 



JEAN CHAPELAI^^ 311 

procured the dismissal of Agnes, he alleges as the 
ground of his complaint that she might have assisted 
the king " with her arms/' When Agnes betakes 
herself to the Duke of Burgundy, she tells him : — 

" Mon bras vient centre tous embrasser la querelle, 
Vient combattre Bedford, Charles et la Pucelle." 

But, on the other hand, no explanation whatever is 
given of the grounds for the confidence reposed " in the 
arm of Agnes," and in the force of " her arms ; " all 
her military preparations, when she is about to rejoin 
King Charles, consist in looking at herself in the 
mirrors which adorn her gilded chamber : — 

*' A voir hors des deux bouts de ses deux courtes manches, 
Sortir a decouvert deux mains longues et blanches 
Dont les doigts inegaux, mais tout ronds et menus, 
Imitent I'embonpoint des bras ronds et chamus. 

'*■ * -it ■* -K- * 

A remarquer surtout I'inimitable grace 

Qui, dans ce bel amas, les beaux rayons semant. 

En rend beau I'assemblage et le lustre charmant." 

Moreover, when Agnes meets the Duke of Burgundy, 
who wishes to throw himself at her feet, she " clasps 
him in both her arms,'' assures him of her "true 
love," makes him sit down by her side, and takes up 
her residence with him sans fa^on in his " solitary 
palace " of Fontainebleau ; and the author, who tells 
us nothing more, imagines that he has thus saved the 
modesty, if not the virtue, of Agnes ; for the king, 
when she returns to him, does not manifest the 
slightest displeasure at the levity of her conduct. 



312 corneille's contemporaries. 

Bad taste is the necessary result of this facihty 
for dispensing with truth : and the author will not 
hesitate to carry hyperbole to that point at which, 
though given as the real image of an object, it 
becomes its falsest representation. Thus, on her 
arrival at the palace of the Duke of Burgundy, when — 

***** D^ja Tombre vaine occupe 1' hemisphere,- 
Agnes lance partout des rayons et des fenx, 
Et son corps parmi I'ombre est un corps lumineux." 

It will cost him nothing to connect with the objects 
he describes, effects that are absolutely contrary to 
their nature. Thus, he depicts the Maid of Orleans 
to us as entirely " shaded by a celestial fire ; " and 
instead of flying from heaven to earth, the luminous 
angel whom the Almighty sends to the Maid, to 
reveal to her her mission, — 

« * * « Tombe sur le bois ou la fille m^dite ; 
L'ombrage s'en ^loigne et ces flammes ^vite." 

In the same manner we shall see the Loire — 

" Murmurer en son cours de voir les matelots, 
Pour avancer le leur, battre ses vites eaux." 

As we advance towards the mouth of the river, we 
shall behold " its wave drowning itself" in an ampler 
bed. If we would take the trouble to seek them out, 
we might easily find a hun(Jred instances of similar 
absurdity : but we must here repeat, lest it should 
be forgotten, that Chapelain was, notwithstanding all 
his faults, a man of sense, convinced of the necessity 
of adhering to the truth, and determined, as he tells 



JEAN CHAPELAIX. 313 

US in his first preface, to avoid "the affected and 
immoderate ingeniosity ^' of Lucan — who was so 
highly esteemed by the " vulgar " of his age — and 
" to follow in the footsteps " of Virgil. 

Chapelain is, therefore, always in pursuit of that 
truth which so often eludes his grasp. Sometimes 
even he meets with it, but then he falls into another 
misfortune : the truth which presents itself to his 
observation is seldom or never noble, elegant, and 
poetic truth, such as the imagination can conceive in 
its happiest moments, but common truth, trivial 
circumstances which strike the eye when contem- 
plating the most ordinary objects. His pictures are 
almost always descriptions, and his descriptions 
rarely consist of really interesting features of the 
object which he desires to^ represent. When nar- 
rating the death of the Maid of Orleans, and the 
cruel care with which the people prepared her 
funeral pile, Chapelain does not omit to mention a 
single faggot. After plastering the first layer of 
sticks with pitch : — 

" 11 met sur cette couche une seconde couche, 
Et la souclie d'en haut croise la basse souche ; 
Mais, pour donner au feu plus de force et plus d'air, 
Le bois en chaque couche est demi-large et clair. 
A la couche seconde une troisieme est jointe 
Qui, plus com*te, la croise et commence la pointe ; 
Plusieurs de suite en suite k ces trois s'ajoutant, 
Toujours de plus en plus vont en pointe montant." 

He will not suffer us to lose a single item of the 



314 COKNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

preparations for the consecration of the king at 
Rheims ; and begins by — 

" Dresser en echafaud un plancher de solives," 

the " long planks ^' of which are afterwards covered — 

" D un tapis a fond d'or sem^ de roses blanches." 

After a victory gained by the French over the 
English, he represents to us the hungry conquerors, — 

" * * * * Le couteau dans la main, 
Sur les vivres tranches assouvissant leur faim." 

Eoger, the brother of Agnes Sorel, explains to some 
holy bishops the subjects of the pictures which adorn 
the gallery of Fontainebleau ; and nothing can be 
more natural than his gestures : — 

" Roger leve la canne et la voix a la fois ; 
L'oeil s' attache k la canne et I'oreille k la voix." 

But Roger cannot be always speaking and walking ; 
when they reach the end of the gallery : — -| 

" On s'assied, on respire, et soudain on se leve." 

And then the poet suddenly displays all his poetic 
fire in the aggrandisement of the smallest objects : — 

" Ainsi quand 1' Ocean s'^branle vers la greve, 
Et par un flux regie, sans le secours des vents, 
Se roule toujours plus sur les sables mouvants ; 
Centre mont, flot sur flot, Tonde vive elev^e, 
Aux bornes de son cours a peine est arriv^e, 
Que sa masse ^cumeuse, en se rengloutissant, 
Dans le sein de I'abime aussit6t redescend. 
Sur ses pas on retourne, et Roger continue." 



JEAIf CHAPELAIN. 315 

How grand a climax — how happy a simile is this ! 
a page and two bishops walking up and down 
a gallery, compared to the ebb and flow of 
the ocean ! Was it such tours de force as these 
which led M. Gaillard to say that " Chapelain 
was born a greater poet than Boileau "? " ^ Was 
it this passage which induced him to declare that 
his companions were always well-chosen and " well- 
placed " ? 

Were it not for the example which I have just 
quoted, it would be difficult for me to coincide in 
M. Gaillard's opinion with regard to comparisons which 
recur at almost regular intervals, which are placed 
with even greater regularity at the commencement of 
the line, Hke borrowed ornaments,^ and which inva- 
riably begin with Ainsi, Comme, Tel, or Tel que. I 
am, nevertheless, wilHng to admit that the reader who 
has courage enough to examine closely the unpub- 
lished part of the poem will find it to be characterised 
by a nobler, less obscure, and more elaborate style 
than the rest of the work ; he will even meet with 
well-chosen dashes of truth and scintillations of 
genius, some examples of which I would gladly 
quote, if Chapelain's talent were sufficiently sustained 

' " If it were allowable to say that Chapelain was born a greater poet 
than Boileau, truth would gain by this paradox." See p. 125 of a small 
volume of " Melanges Littdraires," printed at Amsterdam in 1756, without 
the author's name. 

2 " Et ses froids ornements a la ligne plantds." 

T^o/Vcait, Satire iv. line 100. 



316 corneille's contemporaries. 

to furnish an entire citation. But his happiness is of 
short duration : — 

" Un vers uoble, quoique dur 
Peut briller dans la Pucelle" 

says Boileau ; ^ but when this is the case, it either 
shines in solitary splendour, or is so miserably 
acconapanied, that it can never be divested of the 
vulgar associations by which it is surrounded. Thus 
Chapelain will express with honest energy the 
indignation with which he is inspired by the 
enormities committed by the French in the suburbs 
of Paris, which they have carried by storm : he 
describes them as slaying the vanquished in cold 
blood ; henceforward — 

" Le combat est iufaine et la victoire est triste. 
L'honneur ne peut souffrir tant de Mches rigueurs : 
La peine est aux vaincus, la honte est aux vainqueurs." 

This last line is fine. There is also considerable 
nobleness in this portrait of the Maid, which bears 
some resemblance to that of Tasso's Sophronia : — 

'* Les doHceurs, les souris^ les attraits ni les charmes, 
De ce visage altier ne forment point les armes ; 
II est beau de lui-meme ; il dompte sans cliarmei' ; 
Et fait qu'on le revere et qu'on n'ose I'aimer. 
Pour tous soins, une fiere et sainte negligence 
De sa male beaute rehausse rexcellence." 

But, a few lines before, we should behold " her 
severe aspect : " — 

" Des moins respectueux attirer le respect." 



I Boileau, ** CEuvres," vol. iii. p. 175, parody of the first Pindaric Ode. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 317 

And, a few lines afterwards, we should find that — 

" * * * * Ses regards flamboyans 
Percent et bi-Hleut tout de leurs traits foudroyan.s." 

I cannot refrain from quoting some eloquent 
passages from the speech delivered by the Maid to 
her rebellious army, whom her aspect has stricken 
with shame and stupor. She arrives in the camp, 
and pretending that she cannot recognise it, inquires 
what has become of it : — 

" Leurs mains centre Bedford sont sans doiite occupies, 
Et de rebelle sang font rougir leurs ^pees ; 
Car ces fronts ^tonnes, ses visages blemis, 
Sont ceux qu'en me voyant prennent mes euuemis ; 
Cast Ik dn Boiirguignon la mome contenance ; 
C'est ainsi que I'Anglois se trouble en ma presence." . • 

Here I must stop ; for the poet, who, unfortunately, 
did not know when he should have stopped, spoils 
this idea by extending it through the two following 
lines, 

Chapelain also gives a gracefiil picture of Marie, 
timidly busied in tending Dunois ; and who, without 
venturing to remind him of his love for the Maid, 
tries in what way she may resemble her rival. 
On one occasion, she dons the cuirass and helmet of 
her lover : — 

" Cher Dnnois, lui dit-elle, ils ne me pesent pas, 
Et je pourrois sous eux affronter le tr^pas: 
Pour te suivre partout ou la gloire te porte, 
Mon amiti^ du moins me rendroit assez fox-te ; 
Et ce valeureux fer redouts des huraains, 
Se pourroit signaler entre mes foibles mains." 



318 corneille's contemporaeies. 

These lines, although an imitation of Armida's 
speech to Rinaldo/ justly belong to Chapelain, who 
has used the same idea in a diifferent manner ; and, 
perhaps, the reserve of Marie will be deemed as 
touching as the passion of Armida. This reserve, 
however, is carried too far when Marie adds that 
" modesty " alone prevents her from following 
Dunois to the fight ; the efiect of the movement is 
thus entirely destroyed, and Chapelain re-appears in 
his true character. 

I will, however, endeavour to quote one or two 
comparisons in which the truth, when conceived in 
a really striking and poetical manner, is not spoiled 
by the expression. In the following extract the 
poet alludes to young Lionel, the son of Talbot, 
whom an unrequited passion for Marie has reduced 
almost to death, and whose physical powers can 
scarcely recover the shock : — 

" Tel un lys orgueilleux, sur qui d'un gi*os nuage, 
Durant la fraiche nuit, s'est d^charge I'orage, 
Et qui sous cet effort coup sur coup redouble, 
Et s'abat et languit de la grele accable ; 
Bien qu'aux puissans rayons du Dieu de la lumiere 
II reprenne 1' eclat de sa beaute premiere, 
Qu'il se relive enfin de son abattement, 
S'il revient de sa chute, il revient lentement." 



^ " Animo ho bene, ho ben vigor che baste 
A condurti i cavalli, a portar I'aste : " 
which Fairfax thus translates : — 



ill I " Courage I have and strength enough, perchance, 

To lead thy courser spare and bear thy lance," 

Tasso, " Gerusalemme liberata," Look xvi. stanza 48. 



JEAX CHAPELAIX. 819 

Although the first Unes are rather strained, the 
image, as a whole, is agreeable and well expressed. 

In another place, the brave Talbot himself, sur- 
rounded by enemies, gives himself up for lost ; but 
his courage does not fail him : — - 

" II est desespere, mais non pas abattu, 
Et medite un trepas digne de sa vertu ; 
Tel est Tin grand lion, roi des monts de Cyrene, 
Lorsque de tout un peuple entoure sur I'ai'ene, 
Centre sa noble vie il voit de toutes part.s, 
Unis et conjures les ^pieux et les dards. 
Eeconnaissant pour Im la mort inevitable. 
II resout a la mort son courage indomptable ; 
n y va sans faiblesse, il y va sans efifroi, 
Et la devant souffrir, la veut souffiir en roi." 

Having thus endeavoured to point out the 
excellencies of Chapelain's style, shall I now have 
the courage to revert to its habitual defects 1 Shall 
I insist upon that triviality of expression which is 
not only connected with triviality of imagery, but 
which frequently imparts meanness to that which 
would otherwise be merely simple : as, for example, 
when the poet makes his combatants " take a rude 
leap,'' or fall " with their legs upward and their head 
hanging down," or represents the Maid of Orleans as 
bearing, " upon her back," the whole weight of the 
war ? Shall I speak of those obscurities which a 
vicious construction accumulates upon the existing 
obscurity of the idea, as in these lines : — 

'' La grandeur du Tres-Haut est son objet unique : 
Elle en repait le feu de son amour pudique, 
Et par les vifa elans de .sa ddvote ardeur 
Monte jusqu'k sa gloire, et soutient .sa splendeur." 



320 COKNEILLE's CONTEMPORARIES, 

Shall I quote instances of those affected repetitions, 
equally devoid of gracefulness and meaning, or of 
those strange analogies of sound, which Chapelain 
is constantly striving to introduce, although it is 
impossible to divine what effect he intends them to 
produce ; as when he says of Joan of Arc : — 

" L'Anglois sur elle tonne, et tonne a grands Eclats ; 
Mais pour tonner sur elle, il ne I'^tonne pas." 

Has not Boileau done ample justice to those " harsh 
lines of inflated epithets,'^ to those lines — 

" * * * Et sans force et sans graces 
Months sur deux grands mots comme sur des ^chasses," 

and to — 

" Ces termes sans raison I'un de I'autre ecart^s," ^ 

to those exaggerated expressions, and generally to 
all the faults of that uncouth style, which was so 
constantly the object of his animadversion that he 
never seems to have thought of bringing any other 
charge against the author of the " Pucelle '^ 1 

Style is, in fact, that in which Chapelain is 
particularly deficient, even more so than most of his 
contemporaries ; to whom, notwithstanding all I have 
said, the author of the *' Pucelle " is superior in the 
justness and even nobleness of his ideas, feelings and 
images, in the arrangement of his plan, and in the 
observance of the proprieties. He has done all that 
study and reflection could effect, at the time in which 

1 Boileau, Satire iv. lines 91, 96, 97, 99. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 321 

he lived ; but genius alone could supply the defi- 
ciencies of a language which was as yet equally desti- 
tute of forms and rules. An extensive acquaintance 
with the ancient authors was useless to a man who 
was unable to find words in which to express their 
thoughts ; and Chapelain, who aimed at following in 
the footsteps of Virgil, did not know enough French 
fully to appreciate the beauties of the Latin poet. 

It is less, however, in consequence of his 
deficiencies than of his lofty pretensions to merit, that 
Chapelain has obtained the unenviable distinction 
of beholding the ridicule cast upon his poems handed 
down to our times. Most of his contemporaries 
have obtained the privilege of enjoying perfect 
obscurity, though far more ridiculous than he was : — 

" Le Jonas inconnu seclie dans la poussiere, 
Le David imprime n'a point vu la lumiere, 
Le Moyse commence k moisir par les bords ; 
Quel mal cela fait-il ? Ceiix qui sont morts sont moi-ts." ^ 

Chapelain was never " dead " enough to grant repose 
to the vigilant anxiety of Boileau, and to calm the 
indignation of the great critic against the most 
illustrious example of the bad taste of his age. Even 
after his miserable failure as a poet, Chapelain's 
reputation as a man of letters had continued 
unimpaired. In 1663, he was appointed by Colbert 
to distribute the pensions bestowed by the King upon 
authors of merit ; and the submissive respect which 

1 Boileau, Satire ix,, lines 191-194. * 



322 corneille's contemporaeies. 

this office inspired for the man who filled it was, to a 
certain extent, justified by the manner in which he 
exercised it. I do not mean to affirm that Chapelain 
altogether resisted the seductions of almost arbitrary 
power, and that the self-love of the man of letters 
did not sometimes influence the justice of the judge. 
Gronovius, a learned Dutchman, complained of not 
having been included in the list of pensions ; and 
Chapelain confesses, in one of his letters, "that he 
had not insisted strongly upon his merit, because 
of the httle eagerness with which he had met his 
advances.'' ^ The success with which flattery was 
attended when addressed to him is demonstrated by 
the liberal use which was made of it. Those who 
placed the " Pucelle " above the jEneid were sure to 
be well received by him ;^ and of the different 
methods of paying court to him, the slander of his 
enemies seems to have been not the least effective. 

f' * * * Pour flatter ce rimeur tutelaire, 
Le fr^re en un besoin va renier son frere," ^ 



^ Chapelain, "Melanges de Litt^rature," p. 41. 

2 See, in Saint-Marc's edition of Boileaus Works, the note on these 
lines of his fourth satire : — 

" Lui-meme il s'applaudit, et, d'un esprit tranquille, 
Prend le pas au Parnasse au-dessus de VirgUe." 

Chapelain, in the Preface to his last twelve books, leaves his readers to 
judge " whether the address of the Legates to Bedford, Charles and Philip, 
does or does not prevail over that of Nestor and Venus to Achilles and 
Diomede." 

3 These lines, quoted in the note to the 94th line of the 1st satire, were 
suppressed in the edition of 1674, and have appeared in no subsequent 
impression. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 323 

said Boileau, whose brother Gilles Boileau, who did 
not love him, spoke of him in less friendly terms to 
Chapelain than to other persons. We also learn the 
value which he set upon the deference of an author, 
from the notes which he addressed to Colbert : one 
of the recommendations of D'Ablancourt is, "that 
he would receive the advice that was given him ; " 
Mezerai's great deficiency is, that " he cannot behave 
with docihty ; '^ Furetiere would be capable of great 
things, " if he would allow himself to be guided ; " 
there would be reason to hope much of Silhon, " if he 
would allow himself to be advised ;'^ and Le Clerc, 
in his mediocrity, at least possesses all the merit of a 
man " who will take good advice/' ^ All this indi- 
cates, as his whole life had fostered, in the author of 
the " Pucelle,'' that necessity for pre-eminence which, 
according to Segrais, led him to bestow no praise 
" on those who he thought might cast him into the 
shade, if their merit came to be known, and who 
were actually residing in Paris or at the Court ;" 
and to honour with his esteem " those only who were 
far distant, in some obscure corner of a remote 
province." ^ There is, however, no reason to beHeve 
that this distrustful self-love corrupted Chapelain's 
fidelity in the important and delicate employment 
which he had been appointed to discharge. Whether 

' Chapelain, "M(^langes de Littdrature," pp. 239, 242, 246, 247. 
2 '' Segraisiana," p. 227. 

Y 2 



324 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

he held the balance fairly between Charpentier, 
Silhon, Le Clerc, Sorbieres, Boyer, the Abbe de la 
Pure, and others, is a matter upon which I will not 
venture to decide. Ill-temper may have rendered 
him unjust towards Menage, with whom he had quar- 
relled;^ but Segrais, Patru, and D'Ablancourt had no 
reason to complain of his judgment concerning them.^ 
He rendered full justice to Corneille ;^ and, in the 
strange dryness of his note upon Moliere,^ we merely 
recognise the first effect produced by too novel and 
original a genius upon an age which he had not yet 
taught to admire him. 

Chapelain's contemporaries have generally borne 
testimony to his probity and sincerity, to the 
affability of his manners, and his easiness of access ; 
but we must not expect to find, in a circumspect 
character like his, the free and generous virtues of an 
exalted nature. " He is a man," he says of himself, 
in his memorial to Colbert, "who makes an ewact 

^ See the note on Menage, in the " Melanges," p. 186 e^ seq. ; and also 
what Chapelain says of him elsewhere, in a letter to Heinsias, p. 95. This 
last passage will suffice to explain the other. Segrais, in his account of 
the quarrel, attributes the blame to Chapelain, whom he disliked, and who 
had refused him his vote at the Academy, to give it to Le Clerc, although 
he had addressed him in an ode, *' which is not," he says, " the least 
excellent of my poems." 

2 See the " Melanges de Littdrature." 

3 " He is a prodigy of wit, and the ornament of the French drama." 
" Melanges de Litterature," p. 250. 

■* " He is well acquainted with the character of comedy, and executes it 
naturally: the plot of his best pieces is borrowed, but judiciously; his 
morality is good, and he needs only to guard against scurrility." — Chapelain, 
"Melanges de Litterature," p. 192. 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 325 

'profession of loving virtue disinterestedly/^ ^ " Exact 
indeed he was/' say& Menage, " very punctual, and a 
formalist in all his actions /' ^ he had studied virtue 
as he had studied poetics, and he observed its rules 
with equal precision, as far as the limits of his know- 
ledge and character would allow him to do so. He 
was well aware of the duties of friendship, and 
alwajs manifested the utmost carefulness to fulfil 
them ; " nevertheless,'' says Segrais, " his friendship 
was the friendship of a coward : he wished to keep 
on good terms with both goat and wolf/' ^ Without 
admitting Segrais' opinion and expression in all their 
severity, we shall, at all events, find in Chapelain's 
letters abundant proofs of his unwilhngness to commit 
himself in the disputes between his friends and 
acquaintance. ^ Acts of virtue, when carried beyond 
what would be advised by ordinary prudence, were 
not sure to receive his approbation. Heinsius, when 
appointed Secretary of the United Provinces, had to 
share this office with one of his relatives, who 
had previously held sole possession of it, and he 
therefore mshed to leave him all its emoluments. 
'' Although this betokens a noble feeling on your 
part," wrote Chapelain to him, " I do not know that 
it is altogether reasonable.'^ ^ Le Fevre, the father 

1 Chapelain, " Melanges de Litt^rature," p. 233. 
2 " Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 73. ^ " Segraisiana," p. 222. 

^ See in the " Melanges," p. 137, his letter to Huyghens, on the quarrel 
between Gilles Boileau and Manage. 

^ Cliapelain, " Melanges de Litteraturc," p. 83. 



326 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

of Madame Dacier, whom Pelisson had benefitted 
with the utmost deHcacy, dedicated a book to 
him during his confinement in the Bastille ; and 
" some persons/' says Menage, " among whom was 
M. Chapelain, fi^und fault with him for so doing." ^ 
Although he was always willing to be of service to 
men of letters, there was one kind of service which 
they never obtained from Chapelain ; the word 
" give," it would appear, was as Httle used by him as 
by Harpagon. One day, however, he allowed his 
feehngs to carry him away so far as to reHeve the 
pressing necessities of one of his friends by the 
magnificent gift of a crown-piece : he thought he 
might justly take credit to himself for this effort of 
generosity ; and when he mentioned the affair, he 
used to say : " We ought to succour our friends in 
their necessities ; but we ought not to contribute to 
their luxury."^ In Chapelain's opinion, luxury 
corresponded with what people of the simplest 
habits consider to be necessaries. Possessing an 
annual income of thirteen thousand Hvres, ^ which 
was then equivalent to more than twenty-five 
thousand francs at the present day, " he contented 
himself with a little ordinary, which was prepared 
for him by a female relative, to whom he paid a 
regular stipend ;" and on those days on which he 
dined out, his relative made him an allowance for 



I " 



Menagiana," vol. ii. p. 17. ^ '< Segraisiana," p. 225. •' Ibid. p. 226. 



JEAN CHAPELAm. 327 

his dinner. ^ His correspondence was very extensive ; 
but, anxious to save himself the expense of postage, 
he was careful to request his friends to write to him 
only by private hands ; ^ and he frequently used, for 
his answers, the envelopes of the letters which he 
had received. ^ All the details of his life corre- 
sponded with this excess of economy ; and Menage, 
on paying him a visit for the first time after twelve 
years of separation, declared that the same logs 
were burning on the hearth which he had seen there 
twelve years before. ^ 

Chapelain's avarice was a perpetual subject of 
diversion to his fi^iends and acquaintance. As he 
had no wife or children, no one could imagine why 
he should be so desirous to hoard his wealth. " The 
wags said that it was in order to marry his Maid ^ to 
some young fellow of good family ; and the pious 
declared that it was in order to obtain canonisation.^' ^ 
His colleagues at the French Academy derived much 
amusement from his fear of being appointed its 
director, and the care which he took to avoid this 
honour, which, in case of the death of one of the 
Academicians, would have put him to the expense 
of twenty livres for the performance of a funeral 
service in the Eglise des Billettes. One of their 

1 " Segraisiana," p. 231. 2 j^[^^ 

•^ Vigneul-Marville, " Melanges," vol. ii. p. 7. 

* " M^nagiana," vol. ii. p. 31, ^ The " Pucelle." 

^ Vipieul-Marville, " Melanges," vol. ii. p. 7. 



3:28 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

number. Chancellor Seguier, the protector of the 
Academy, being eighty-four years of age, was a 
threat perpetually hanging over his head. At length 
the Chancellor fell ill ; the post of director became 
vacant, and, either by chance, or by the intention 
of those who knew his character, Chapelain was 
appointed. His anguish may be more readily 
imagined than described. Nevertheless, the three 
months of his directorship passed by, and the 
Chancellor still lived ; but he could not survive 
long, and Chapelain became desirous to resign his 
office. Unfortunately, on the day of their session, 
the number of Academicians was not complete, and 
the nomination of his successor was deferred to 
another day. During the interval, the Chancellor 
died. Chapelain was in despair. " I am ruined," 
he said ; " my property will not be sufficient : if 
it were a simple Academician, it would be less 
grievous ; but the Protector ! This expense will 
reduce me to beggary !" '' Good," said Patru, " the 
Cardinal was at least worth as much as the Chan- 
cellor. I was director when he died ; I had his 
service performed entirely at my own expense ; it 
merely cost me two pistoles more, and the matter was 
managed very well." Two pistoles were a great 
deal too much for Chapelain ; and he therefore 
declared that it was not enough for the Chancellor, 
pretended that he was not rich enough to act in a 



JEAN CHAPELAIN. 329 

manner becoming the importance of the occasion, 
and at last induced every Academician to contribute 
according to his means and will. As he collected 
the contributions, he may have abstained from paying 
his own quota ; and it was even suspected that he 
made a profit by the transaction.^ 

It will readily be imagined that Chapelain did not 
reject the advantages to be derive'd from assiduous 
attendance at the Academy ; and, in this particular, 
his avarice gave confirmation to his natural exacti- 
tude. He was proceeding thither one day, after 
some heavy rain, and, on arriving in the Eue St. 
Honore, he found the stream so wide that he could 
not step across. A plank had been provided for the 
accommodation of passengers, but a small fee was 
required to be paid for its use ; so Chapelain preferred 
to wait until the water had flowed away. Mean- 
while three o'clock drew near ; in a few minutes 
more he would be too late, and would lose his 
fee. Chapelain decided at onco ; plunged into the 
water nearly up to his knees ; arrived in time at 
the Academy ; and, instead of going near the fire, 
carefully concealed his legs under the table, for fear 
any one should perceive his misadventure. Chape- 
lain was then more than seventy-nine years old : the 
cold seized upon him, settled in his chest, and he 
died a few days afterwards,^ on the 22nd of February, 

' '■ Segraisiana," p. 223 cl seq. - Ibid. pp. 226, 227. 



330 JEAN CHAPELATN. 

1674, leaving to his heirs, according to some state- 
ments, a fortune of one hundred thousand crowns, ^ 
and, according to others, four hundred thousand 
Hvres, more than two hundred thousand of which 
were in ready money .^ 

A paraphrase of the " Miserere," and three or 
four small poems, compose, with the " Pucelle,'' the 
whole of Chapelain's productions in verse. His 
preface to the " Adone," and a few passages from 
his letters, inserted in the " Melanges de Litterature," 
are the only monuments which remain to us of his 
talents as a critic. 



VigneulrMarmlle, "Melanges," vol. ii. p. 7. 
2 " Segraisiana," pp. 225, 226. 



JEAN EOTEOU. 

(1609—1650.) 



A MAN of genius has two classes of disciples. 
One class is composed of mere imitators, who strive 
only to reproduce the manner of their master, catch 
with tolerable exactness the forms of his style, 
devote their attention to the kind of subjects which 
he treated and the ideas which he preferred, and 
may even furnish us with that inferior gratification 
which a poor copy affords, by reviving our 
recollection of the impressions produced by the 
contemplation of a splendid original. Duryer cer- 
tainly had " Cinna " constantly before his eyes while 
he was writing his tragedy of " Scevole/' Junia, 
the daughter of Brutus, and mistress of Scsevola, is 
a prisoner in the camp of Porsenna. She is told 
that Scsevola has been seen in the camp, disguised 
as an Etrurian soldier ; and her informant adds, that 
he has assumed this disguise in order to escape ; 
upon which she exclaims : — 

" Pour se sauver, dis-tu'? tu n'as point vu Sccvole !" 

In his tragedy of " Saul," that monarch, smitten by 



332 corneille's contemporaries. 

the hand of God, trembles before the army of 
the Phihstiues ; and Jonathan thus endeavours to 
rekindle his father's courage : — 

" Est-il done en ^tat de donner de I'effroi ? 
A-t-il appris h vaincre en fuyant devant moi ] 

***** ^t 

Laissez voler la crainte ou I'ennemi s'assemble ; 
Uu roi n'est pas trouble que -son trone ne tremble ; 
Mais il connoit trop tard, quand il a suceombe, 
Que le trone qui tremble est k demi-tombe. 
Croyez en vos enfans, croyez en leur courage, 
D'un triompbe immortel I'infaillible presage ; 
Dans le sein de la gloire ils ont toujoui's vecu ; 
Enfin, je suis le moindre, et j'ai toujours vaincu." 

Who cannot recognise, in these lines, the model 
which Duryer had constantly before his eyes ? Who 
does not feel, when perusing them, something of 
that emotion with which we are inspired by the 
magnificent verses of Corneille ? 

The other class of disciples pay less attention to 
the examples furnished them by their master than 
to the emotion which those examples originate in 
their souls. They feel that faculties are awakened 
within them by the voice of genius, which, but for 
its summons, would have lain dormant within their 
breasts, but which are, nevertheless, their own 
individual and natural faculties. They have received 
the impulse, but they direct it according to their 
own judgment ; and if their productions do not 
exhibit the sustained energy of those spontaneous 
outbursts which are the unfettered fruits of the 



JEAN EOTROU. 333 

ascendancy of an imperious nature, they, at least, 
possess a certain measure of originality, and even 
of life-giving fecundity. " Yenceslas" is one of those 
original works which owe their existence to an 
extraneous impulse. Rotrou, who had long been a 
dramatic author utterly destitute of all inspiration, 
proved himself a poet after he had heard Corneille. 

Jean Rotrou was born at Dreux, on the 19 th of 
August, 1609, of an ancient and honourable family, 
which, both before and after his lifetime, held high 
magisterial offices in that town.^ It appears, however, 
that Rotrou's father, satisfied with the competency 
which he derived from the possession of a moderate 
fortune, lived on his property without engaging in 
any profession. We do not know whether the son 
was intended to pursue a similar course ; and we 
are equally ignorant of the obstacles or facilities 
which he encountered in following his taste for a 
dramatic career, and of the circumstances which led 
to the formation of that taste. The life of Rotrou, 
revealed to posterity by a fine poem and a virtuous 
action, has, in other respects, remained entirely 
unknown. The first fact which I have been able to 

* Pierre Eotrou was lieutenant-general of the bailiwick of Dreux in 
1561. At the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the 
eighteenth, Eustache de Rotrou was a royal councillor, president, and 
civil and criminal lieutenant-general of the bailiwick. M. de Rotrou de 
Sodreville, the grand-nephew of the poet (see Titan du Tillet, " Parnasse 
Fran§ais," p. 236, edit. 1732), was appointed a councillor of the Great 
Council in 1728, and his sister married the Marquis de Rambuteau. See 
Lamho't, " Histoire Littdraire du Si^cle de Louis XIV.," vol. ii. p. 299. 



334 CORNEILLES CONTEMPOEAEIES. 

discover regarding him bears the date of 1632. 
Rotrou, who was then twenty-three years of age, 
and known as the author of seven or eight theatrical 
pieces, — such as the " Hypocondriaque,'^ the " Bague 
de rOubh,'' '' Cleagenor et Doristee,'' the "Diane/' the 
" Occasions Perdues,'' and perhaps the "Menechmes'' 
and the " Hercule Mourant/' — was introduced by 
the Count de Fiesque to Chapelain, who, in a letter 
to Godeau, dated October 30th, 1632, gives an 
account of his visit, and adds : " It is a pity that a 
young man of such fine natural talent should have 
submitted to so disgraceful a servitude ; but it will 
not be my fault if we do not soon emancipate him/' ^ 
No explanation can be given of these words of 
Chapelain. What could have been the nature of 
that servitude which was considered disgraceful at 
a time when men held such very lax notions on this 
point ? The comedy of the " Hypocondriaque '' is 
dedicated to the Count de Soissons, of whom Rotrou 
styles himself " the very humble subject." But this 
title, which may lead us to suppose that Rotrou 
considered himself dependent upon some appanage 
of the Count de Soissons, indicates no domestic 
servitude. Was he attached to the household of the 
Count de Fiesque 1 But, even supposing this to 
have been the case, it could not have been regarded 
as a disgrace by Chapelain, who had been so long in 

^ Chapelain, " Melanges de Litterature," p. 4. 



JEAN EOTROTJ. 335 

the service of the Marquis de la Trousse. I should, 
therefore, be rather inclined to suppose that he was 
engaged as author to a troop of comedians ; an 
engagement common enough at that time, and of 
which Hardy had been the first to set the example. 
The protection of the Count de Fiesque, who was held 
in high esteem by the comedians, to whom he had 
frequently rendered essential service,^ might give 
greater probabiHty to this supposition ; and it only 
remains for us to reconcile the idea which Chapelain 
gives us of Rotrou's position with what we know 
regarding the wealth and distinction of his family. 
Some peculiarities of Rotrou's character, which have 
been handed down to our times, furnish a plausible 
explanation of this enigma. Exalted feelings, and 
an upright and generous disposition, are not sufficient 
to guard a man against falling into errors, even of the 
most ignoble kind. Rotrou was fond of play ; and 
this passion, which was probably not the only passion 
of his youth, so violently overcame all his resolutions, 
that, as he tells us himself,'^ the only way in which 
he was able to preserve himself from the conse- 
quences of his own folly was by throwing his money 



1 " When it was proposed to induce the comedians to admit, or to secure 
the observance, on the stage, of the rule of twenty-four hours, Chapelain, 
who was very anxious for the adoption of this rule, which, it is said, he 
was one of the first to suggest to the authors of his time, persuaded the 
Count de Fiesque to undertake the negotiation, because his influence over 
the comedians was well known." " Segraisiana," p. 160. 

2 Lambert, " Histoire Littdraire du Si^cle de Louis XIV.," vol. ii. p. 302. 



336 CORNEILLE S CONTEMPORARIES. 

into a heap of faggots — rather a singular kind of 
strong-box — from which it was so difficult to extract 
it, that his impatience allowed it to lie there for a 
much longer period than his weakness would have 
permitted it to remain in his purse. The heap of 
faggots, however, did not always so faithfully retain 
its deposit as to be never empty. Want of funds 
sometimes reduced the poet to painful extremities. 
Just as he had finished " Venceslas,'' Rotrou was 
arrested for a trifling debt, which he was utterly 
unable to pay. In this state of distress any bargain 
was good which would relieve the poet from his 
difficulty ; and " Venceslas ^' was offered to the 
comedians, and sold for twenty pistoles/ There is 
no great injustice in supposing that a man, who, at 
thirty-eight years of age, exposed himself to such 
adventures, might, when only eighteen, have found 
himself compelled, by some youthful extravagance, 
to embrace the aid of resources quite inconsistent 
with the position which he was born to occupy in 
society. Undoubtedly, Chapelain's good-will was 
not useless in enabling Rotrou to escape from the 
unsuitable position in which he found himself placed. 
We soon find him figuring as one of the five authors 
who were pensioned to compose dramas, under the 
directions of the prime minister ; and this new 

1 To this sum, after the success of "Venceslas," they thought it right to 
add a present. We do not know whether Rotrou accepted it or not. See 
the "Histoire du Theatre Franfais," vol. viii. p. 189. 



JEAN ROTKOU. . 337 

servitude, being more liberally paid than the other, 
must, on that ground alone, have appeared much 
more honourable. It is unknown at what period he 
received from the king a pension of a thousand 
livres/ 

Associated, in the confidence of the Cardinal, with 
CoUetet, Bois-E-obert, and Corneille, it is not easy to 
perceive by what kind of services Eotrou could have 
obtained over the last-named poet that sort of 
superiority which the author of the " Cid " seemed, 
it is said, to acknowledge all through his life, by 
giving the title of father to a colleague who was 
younger and probably less serious than himself 
Those who have handed down this anecdote to us 
assure us that it was from Rotrou that Corneille had 
learned the principles of dramatic art ; but what 
were those principles which were known to Rotrou 
and unknown to Corneille 1 The " Hypocondriaque," 
which preceded " MeHte " by a year at most,^ is 
rather less in accordance with the rules than the 
latter piece ; for Corneille has at least observed unity 
of place, which Rotrou has, like most of his con- 
temporaries, utterly disregarded ; and as for good 
sense and probability, the " Hypocondriaque " cannot 
assuredly boast any superiority in either of these 
respects. The plot of " Melite " is a model of 

1 Titon clu Tillet, " Parnasse Fran9aise," p. 235. 
2 The "Histoire clu Theatre Fran^ais " give? 1G28 as the date of its 
performance. 

z 



338 CORNEILLE's CONTEMPOE ARIES. 

reasonableness in comparison with the adventures 
of Cloridan, " a young nobleman of Greece," who, 
on his way to the Court at Corinth, " the capital 
city of Greece,"^ goes mad on being told that his 
mistress is dead, pretends to be dead himself, takes 
up his residence in a coffin, and only recovers from 
his insanity on beholding the resuscitation of sham 
corpses by the sounds of music, by which he is led to 
believe that he cannot be dead, as the music produces 
no corresponding effect upon himself It is true 
that Rotrou afterwards made honourable amends for 
the defects of this work ; and with greater modesty 
than most of his colleagues, he confesses in the 
argument to this piece, which was printed in 1631, 
three years after the presumed date of its per- 
formance, " that there are many excellent poets, but 
not at twenty years of age." ^ But, at the very time 
that he printed this confession, Rotrou was bringing 
on the stage the " Heureuse Constance, '^ one scene of 
which is laid in Hungary and the next in Dalmatia ; 
when twenty-five years old, he produced the " Belle 
Alphrede," the action of which occurs partly at Oran, 
and partly in London ; and in 1635 we find, in his 
" Innocente Infidelite," some courtiers of a king of 
Epirus fighting with pistols. This last piece was 

^ See the argument at tlie beginning of the " Hypocondriaque," 
2 This saying of Rotrou, who surely did not wish to diminish his claims 
to indulgence, would place the date of the composition of the " Hypocon- 
driaque" in the year 1629. 



I 



JEAN ROTROU. 31^9 

performed during the 3^ear in which Corneille 
produced " Medee." 

Compelled as we are to proceed from conjecture 
to conjecture, may we not suppose that Rotrou's 
more energetic and decided character had afforded 
him, on seyeral occasions, the means of protecting the 
timid simplicity of a great man, whose rival his just 
modesty did not allow him to think of becoming '? 
Among the wits who then laid claim to some 
reputation, Rotrou was almost the only one who was 
not alarmed at the glory obtained by the " Cid ; '' 
and he doubtless dared to defend that which he was 
worthy to admire. The continually-increasing splen- 
dour of that poetical renown which thenceforward 
eclipsed the fame of all competitors, only inspired 
Rotrou with a keener admiration of the beauties 
which he beheld so lavishly displa^'-ed before his eyes. 
He expressed this in a remarkable manner in the 
" Saint-Genest," a commonplace work enough in other 
respects (especially as it appeared several years after 
" Polyeucte '' ^), the subject of which is the martyrdom 
of the actor Genest, who was converted, on the stage, 
by an angel who appeared to him while he was 
performing, in presence of Diocletian, a piece against 

^ The performance of the " Veritable Samt-Genest," by Rotrou, is placed 
in the " Histoire du Theatre Fran9ais," iu the year 1646. In 1645, appeared 
another " Saint-Genest," by Desfontaines, whicli is not quite so bad as 
Rotrou's piece, because the author has more closely imitated " Polyeucte." 
This " Saint-Genest " has been inserted by mistake in the collection of 
Rotrou's dramas in the National Libraiy at Parifs, 5 vols., 4to., No. 5509. 

z 2 



340 CORNEILLE's CONTEMPORARIES. 

the Christians. Rotrou represents Diocletian as 
questioning Genest upon the state of the drama; 
and he inquires : — 

'' Quelle plume est en regne, et quel fameux esprit 
S'est acquis, dans le cirque, un plus juste credit ? " 

Genest repHes : — 

" Nos plus nouveaux sujets, les plus dignes de Rome, 
Et les plus grands efforts des veilles d'un grand homme, 
A qui les rares fruits que sa Muse a produit, 
Ont acquis dans la scene un legitime bruit, 
Et de qui certes I'art comme I'estime est juste, 
Portent les noms fameux de Pompde et d'Auguste. 
Ces poemes sans prix, ou son illustre main • 
D'un pinceau sans pareil a peint I'esprit Remain, 
Rendront de leurs beautes votre oreille idolatre, 
Et sont aujourd'hui I'^me et I'amour du theatre." 

Though this eulogium is neither well placed nor 
well expressed, it is, at least, very candid. Nothing- 
could trammel the movements of Rotrou's just and 
generous character. His excessive facility, which is 
at once proved and explained to us by the thirty-five 
dramas ^ which have come down to us from his pen, 

1 The following is a list of them : — The " Hypocondriaque, ou le Mort 
Amoureux," a tragi-comedy, 1628 ; the " Bague de I'Oubli," a comedy, 
1628; " Cl^agenor et Dorist^e," a tragi-comedy, 1630; "La Diane," a 
comedy, 1630 ; " Les Occasions Perdues," a tragi-comedy, 1631 ; " Les 
Menechmes," a comedy, 1632 ; '' Hercule Mourant," a tragedy, 1632 ; "La 
Celimene," * a comedy, 1633 ; " La Belle Alphi-ede," a comedy, 1634 ; "La 



* Rotrou, when sketching the plan of this piece, intended to make it a 
pastoral, under the name of " Amaryllis " ; but, having afterwards changed 
his opinion, he made it a comedy. Some of his friends, after his death, 
found the sketch of this pastoral, and gave it to Tristan, who finished it, 
and had it performed, in 1652, at the Hotel de Bourgogne, under the 
names of Rotroti and himself. (See the notice at the beginning of the 



JEAN ROTROU. 341 

the unrestraint of his character, and his fondness for 
pleasures, probably allowed his interests as a poet 
only a moderate share in a life which was animated 
by tastes and feehngs of another kind. His name 
does not occur in connection with any of the Hterary 
events of his time ; and we very seldom meet with 
it in those anecdotical collections in which several of 
his contemporaries, and particularly Menage and 
Segrais, have so carefully embalmed a multitude of 
facts and names which seemed destined, by their insig- 
nificance, to immediate and complete oblivion. We 

Pelerine Amoureuse," a tragi-comeJy, 1634; *' Le Filandre," a comedy, 
1635; " Agdsilas de Colchos," a tragi-coinedy, 1635; " L'lunocente 
Infid^lit^," a tragi-comedy, 1636 ; '* La Clorinde," a comedy, 1635 ; 
" Am^lie," a tragi-comedy, 1636 ; " Les Sosies," a comedy, 1636 ; " Les 
Deux Pucelles," a tragi-comedy, 1636; " Laure persecutee," a tragi-comedy, 
1637; "Antigone," a tragedy, 1638; "Les Captifs de Plaute, ou les 
Esclaves," a comedy, 1038 ; " Crisante," a tragedy, 1639 ; " Iphig^nie en 
Aulide," a tragedy, 1640 ; " Clarice, ou I'Amour Constant," a comedy, 1641 ; 
" B^lisaire," a tragedy, 1643; " Celie, ou le Vice-Roi de Naples," a comedy, 
1645; "La Sceur," a comedy, 1645; " Le Veritable Saint-Genest," a 
tragedy, 1646 ; " Dom Bernard de Cabr^re," a tragi-comedy, 1647 ; " Ven- 
ceslas," a tragi-comedy, 1647; " Cosroes," a tragedy, 1648 ; " La Flori- 
monde," a comedy, 1649 ; and " Dom Lope de Cardonne," a tragi-comedy, 
1649. 

We have also the sketch of the poetical part of a drama on the " Bii"th of 
Hercules," Rotrou's last work, which was performed at the Theatre du 
Marais, and printed in 1649. It is probably a ballet of *' Amphitryon." 
Several other works, which were never either performed or printed, have 
without authority been ascribed to him. The list which I have adopted 
is that given in the " Histoire du Thdatre Fi-au§ai.^," vol, iv. p. 410, et seq. 



** Amaiyllis," and the " Histoire du Thdatre Fran^ais," vol. vii. p. 328.) Vhvc 
Niceron includes " Amaryllis " among Rotrou's Works, which raises their 
number to thirty-six, instead of thirty-five. See the " Mdmoires pour 
servir a I'Histoiro des Hommes illustres dans la Rdpublique dcs Lcttrcs," 
vol. xvi. p. 93, et seq. 



34^ COENEILLE'S CONTEMPOKAEIES. 

possess upon Rotrou none of those eulogistic or 
epigrammatic poems which ordinarily result from 
the friendship of men of letters, and in which 
this period was more abundant than any other. 
All we know of him leads us to believe that, living in 
peace and indifference among his colleagues, Rotrou 
enjoyed undisturbed a reputation which he took no 
pains to cultivate, and regarding which the general 
silence might render us sceptical, if the success which 
Rotrou's dramas achieved were not attested by this 
saying of Corneille : " M. Rotrou and I could gain 
a subsistence even for mountebanks/'' ^ Whatever 
power friendship and gratitude may have exercised 
over Corneille, it is certain that nothing but the force 
of truth could have led him to say : " M. Rotrou 
and!" 

In order to justify this distinction, we must not 
expect to find in Rotrou's works, with the exception 
of " Yenceslas," those novel views, and that particular 
turn of mind which were manifested even in Cor- 
neille's earliest works, and announced the advent of 
an original genius, whose vigour would make way for 
itself in spite of the routine formalism of the time. All 
that romantic balderdash which then filled the stage 
— abductions, combats, recognitions, and imaginary 

1 '* To indicate," adds Manage, '' that the public would not have failed to 
come to the performance of their pieces, even if they had been badly per- 
formed." "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 306. This is the only place in which he 
mentions Rotrou. 



JEAN ROTROU. 343 

kingdoms^ — accidental loves which spring up pre- 
cisely when it is necessary to embarrass the scene, 
and cease as soon as it is convenient to bring mat- 
ters to a conclusion — innumerable and immeasurable 
kisses, requested, given, and returned upon the stage, 
sometimes accompanied by even more passionate 
caresses, ^ and followed by assignations, the intention 
of which is not in the shghtest degree dissembled, ^ 
— heroines embarrassed by the consequences of their 
weakness, and running all over the world in search of 
the perfidious lover who has robbed them of their 
honour, — these are the leading characteristics of most 
of Eotrou's plays ; — these are the ordinary inspira- 
tions of that Muse whom he boasted of having 
rendered so modest that " she had laid aside her 
profanity, and become as pious as a nun." * Cor- 
neille alone had had the wisdom to banish these 
monotonous enormities from his works. Accordingly, 
most of Rotrou's productions must be classed among 
those ephemeral essays to which art is indebted 
neither for discoveries nor progress ; but, in his time, 
they may have been remarkable, among those 
honoured with constant applause, for greater truth- 
fulness of tone, less dulness of invention, and a more 



' See the " Heureuse Constauee," in which a Queen of Dalmatia is 
introduced. 

2 See " La Celiane." 

^ See " Les Occasions Perdues.'" 

* See the Dedicatory Epistle of the " Bague de lOubli," 



344 cokneille's contemporaeies. 

witty and elevated style. True comic power is some- 
times perceptible in them, at least in the dialogues. 
One of Eotrou's pieces, " La Soeur," contains a scene 
almost exactly similar to one in the " Fourberies de 
Scapin," and furnished Moliere with several of the 
ideas which he has introduced into his '' Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme/' — if Moliere and Rotrou were not both 
equally indebted for them to some Italian play, as we 
may suppose from the scene of the action being laid 
at Nola, in Campania, from most of the names being 
Itahan, from the style of the plot, and especially from 
the gaiety of several scenes — a gaiety which Rotrou 
never attained except in his imitations. Anselme, the 
old dupe, has been engaged for fifteen years in search- 
ing for his wife and daughter, who had been captured 
at sea by a corsair ; and learning that they have 
been sold into slavery at Constantinople, he sends his 
son Lelio thither with money to ransom them. On the 
road, Lelio falls in love with a pretty maid-servant at 
an inn ; and, instead of continuing his journey, marries 
his mistress, takes her home with him and introduces 
her to his father as his sister, declaring at the same 
time that his mother is dead. Anselme, displeased at 
the excessive affection which the brother and sister 
manifest for each other, complains of it to the valet, 
who throws the whole blame on the journey to 
Turkey, which, he says, is a most dangerous country 
for young folks to visit : — 



JEAIs^ EOTROU. 345 

" Car les Turcs, comme on salt, sont fort mauvais clirdtiens ; 
Les livres en ce lieu n'entrent point en commerce ; 
En aucun art illustre aucun d'eux ne s'exerce ; 
Et Ton y tient qiuconqne est autre qu'ignorant, 
Pour Catalamechis, qui sont gens de neant. 

ANSELMB. 

Plus jaloux de sa soeur qu'on n'est d'une maitresse, 
Jamais il ne la quitte ; ils se parlent sans cesse, 
Me raillent, se font signe, et se moquant de moi, 
Ne s'apergoivent pas que je m'en apergois. 



La, ehacun k gausser librement se dispense ; 
La raillerie est libre et n'est point une offense ; 
Et, si je m'en souviens, on appelle en ces lieux 
Urchec, ou gens d'esprit, ceux qui raillent le mieux. 

ANSELME. 

lis en usent pour Nole avec trop de licence ; 
Et qxioique leur amour ait beaucoup d'innocence, 
Je ne puis approuver ces baisers assidus 
D'une ardeur mutuelle et donnes et rendus, 
Ces discours a I'oreille, et ces tendres caresses, 
Plus digues passe-temps d'amans et de maitresses, 
Qu'ils ne sont en effet d'un frere et d'une soeur. 



La loi de Mahomet, par une charge expresse, 
Enjoint ces sentiments d'amour et de tendresse, 
Que le sang justifie et semble autoriser; 
Mais le temps les pourra ddmahometiser. 
lis appellent tuhalch cette ardeur frateruelle, 
Ou boram, qui veut dire intime et mutuelle," 

This impudence on the part of a knavish valet 
is quite in the style of Moliere's Scapin. The idea 
of the scene in the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme " is 
precisely identical with that in which the valet 
Ergaste, whose falsehoods are beginning to be 
discovered, calls, as a witness to the truth of all he 



346 COENEILLES CONTEMPOEAEIES. 

has said, a young man, who, having been brought 
up at Constantinople, knows no other language than 
real Turkish : — 

" II n'entend pas la langue et ne peut te rdpondre," 

says Anselme. " I'll speak to him in Turkish," says 
Ergaste ; and he begins to repeat his counterfeit 
Turkish. The young man, who cannot understand 
a word he says, expresses his embarrassment in 
answers, which Anselme does not comprehend, but 
which Ergaste does not fail to interpret to him in a 
most satisfactory manner. One of these answers 
contains only two words — vare-hece ; Ergaste pre- 
tends that they are equivalent in meaning to a long 
phrase, with which he finds it necessary to terminate 
the conversation : — 

" T'en a-t-il pu tant dire en si peu de propos ? " 

Anselme inquires ; and Ergaste coolly replies : — 

" Qui, le langage turc dit beaucoup en deux mots.''^ 

The vare-hece in this passage is clearly the hel-men of 
Moliere. ^ 

The author of the " Metromanie " may also have 

^ Rotrou, " La Sceur/' act iii. scene 5. 

2 See the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme," act iv. scene 6. 

*' Cleante. — Bel-men. 

" CoviELLE. — He says you must go quickly with him to prepare yourself 
for the ceremony, in order to see your daughter afterwards, and to conclude 
the marriage. 

" M. JouRDAiN, — Did he say all that in two words ? 

" CoviELLE. — Yes ; it is a peculiarity of the Turkish language, that it 
expresses a great deal in few words." 



JEAN ROTKOIT. 347 

borrowed somewhat frora the scene in which Anselme's 
wife, on her return from Constantinople, being in- 
formed, before she has seen her husband, of the 
state of her son's affections, promises to promote 
his wishes by feigning to recognise as her daughter 
the young girl whom Lelio has passed off as his 
sister. Indeed, when that young lady is presented to 
her, her transports of delight are so exceedingly 
natural that Lelio and his valet, surprised at the 
talent with which she has performed her part, pay 
her almost the same compliments as Francaleu pays 
to Baliveau, in the " Metromanie/' 

'' Je n'en fais point le fin, j'en prendrois des lecons,"^ 

says Ergaste ; and Constance puts an end to their 
admiration only by informing them that her trans- 
ports of joy and surprise were real, and that Lelio's 
wife is actually her daughter, whom she believed lost. 
The author, as will readily be imagined, does not 
fail to set things in order by means of further 
explanations ; and Lelio is saved the misfortune of 
an incestuous love and marriage. The plot of this 



^ Rotrou, " La Soeur," act iv. scene 5. Francaleu, astonished in a similar 
manner at the expression of surprise manifested on Baliveau's countenance 
when he unexpectedly meets his nephew, says to Damis : — 

" Monsieur I'homme accompli, qui du moins croyez I'etre, 
Prenez, prenez le9on, car voilii votre maitre." 
But in the " M^tromanie," the effect, which is prepared beforehand by the 
knowledge possessed by the audience of the respective positions of the 
chai'acters, is far more complete and comic. 



348 corneille's contemporaries. 

piece is as bad as its details are sometimes hu- 
morous ; but it is difficult to believe that these details 
rightfully belong to the author of " Celimene," 
" Celiane," " Clorinde/' and a host of other pieces 
equally dull. 

Rotrou was always more successful in his imitations 
than in his original works. He had the good taste 
to seek occasional models among the ancient writers, 
whose merits he appreciated, even if he were not 
fully conscious of the whole advantage that might be 
derived from them by men of genius superior to his 
own. I would not vouch for it that he always went 
back to these models themselves ; for it is difficult to 
believe in the classic erudition of a man who, in 
" Iphigenie en Aulide,'' represents Ulysses challenging 
Achilles to fight a duel, ^ and whose other works give 
proof of even stranger ignorance. ^ The dramatic 
poets of antiquity had already been translated into 
French, and Sforza d'Oddi, an Italian author, from 
whom Rotrou has imitated a comedy, ^ and whom he 
praises for his imitations of " Plautus, * might probably 

1 " AcHiLLE. S'agissant de se battre, Ulysse est toujours lent. 
Ultsse. Vous ne m'en prirez point que je n'y satisfasse. 
AcHiLLE. Demeurons done d'accord de Theui-e et de la place." — 
Rotrou, " Iphigenie/' act v. scene 3. 
2 Thus, in " La Soeur," old Geronte, returning from his captivity among 
the Turks at Constantinople, speaks to Anselme about the Church of Saint- 
Sophia, — 

" * * * oil les Chretiens s'assemblent, 
Pour I'office divin qui s'y fait avec soin." 
^ His comedy of " Clarice." ^ See the Preface to " Clarice." 



JEAN EOTEOU. 349 

have assisted him in the production of the " Sosies " 
and the "Menechmes." 

Much has been said of the obhgations which 
Mohere's "Amphitryon'' was under to Rotrou's 
" Sosies ;" but Httle attention has been given to the 
fact that the leading features of resemblance between 
the two works are all to be found in the original of 
Plautus. That which Moliere may have borrowed 
from Rotrou, or, like him, from some more modern 
author, is contained within the limits of two or three 
lines, ^ and the idea of the scene in which Mercury 
drives Sosie out of the house, when he comes in to 
dine. In the remainder of the piece Rotrou im- 
plicitly follows the Latin poet, omitting some details 
which would be uninteresting to modern ears, and 
rendering, in a very humorous manner, those parts 

^ Such as this line from " Les Sosies," act iv. scene 2 : — 

" Si Ton mangeait des yeux, il m'auroit devore." 
Which Moliere thus renders, in his " Amphitryon," act iii. scene 2 : — 
*' Si des regards on pouvait mordre, 
II m'auroit d^ja d^vor(^." 
And this line, which Rotrou puts in the mouth of one of the captains 
invited by Jupiter in the name of Amphitryon : — 

" Point, point d' Amphitryon ou Ton ne dine point," 
is placed by Moliere much more suitably in the mouth of Sosie : — 
" Le veritable Amphitiyon 
Est I'Amphitryon ou Ton dine." 
This reflection of Moli^re's Sosie : — 

" Le seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule," 
is also imitated from the following remai-k of Rotrou's Sosie, as it does 
not occur in Plautus : — 

" On appelle cela lui sucrer le breuvage." 



350 coeneille's contemporaries. 

which were likely to suit an audience in the seven- 
teenth century. But he does not, like Moliere, make 
them his own by that hvely and natural style of 
wit, and those happy additions, which have raised 
" Amphitryon " to the rank of an original work, 
and assigned it a permanent position in the French 
drama. Eotrou was satisfied with translating with 
considerable taste that which Moliere afterwards 
imitated with consummate geiiius. 

The translated comedy of the " Menechmes,'^ in 
which Eiotrou has transformed the courtesan Erotime 
into a coquettish, but virtuous young widow, leads 
us, less even than the " Sosies," to anticipate all that 
Regnard derived at a later period from such a subject. 

The ancient tragedies which were imitated by 
Rotrou indicate, like his comedies, that he possessed 
talent which stood in need of support, but which, at 
all events, could make the best use of the helps to 
which it had recourse. We must not expect to find 
them characterised by the art of composition — an art 
which, at that period, was understood by Corneille 
alone. Rotrou's " Iphigenie en Aulide '^ is, with the 
exception of a few scenes, an exact imitation of 
Euripides^ play of the same name. His " Hercule 
Mourant'' is the "Hercules CEtoeus'' of Seneca, to 
which Rotrou has merely added the episode of 
the loves of lole and a young prince named 
Areas, which forms the subject of the fifth act. 



JEAN EOTROU. 351 

And his " Antigone," which is composed from the 
" Phoenissae " of Em-ipides, the " Thebais " of Seneca, 
and the "Antigone" of Sophocles, contains two 
tragedies within the space of one. But, in these 
three works, Rotrou is entitled to the merit of not 
having excessively disfigured the ancients by that 
triviality of language which his contemporaries 
mingled with the most ridiculous pomposity. If he 
has not very successfully imitated the simplicity of 
Sophocles, he has at least frequently diminished the 
inflation of Seneca : and several passages which have 
been most happily rendered, place Eotrou above the 
ordinary level of the authors of his time. In Seneca's 
" Hercules CEtoeus " the hero, overcome by pain, 
implores the aid of Jupiter for the first time ; and 
thus begs him to grant him. death : — - 

" * * * Tot feras vici hom-idas, 
Reges, tyrannos ; non tamen vultus meos 
In astra torsi ; semper hsec nobis manus 
Votum spopondit ; nulla, propter me, sacro 
Micuere coelo fulmina * * *." ^ 

Rotrou extends this idea as follows : 

" J'ai toujours du ma vie h, ma seule defense, 
Et je n'ai point encore implor^ ta puissance ; 
Quand les tetes de I'hydre ont fait entre mes bras 
Cent replis tortueux, je ne te priois pas ; 
Quand j'ai dans les eufers affronte la Mort meme, 
Je n'ai point r^clam^ ta puissance supreme ;2 



1 Seneca, " Hercules CEtoeus," lines 1295—1299. 
2 Racine, in " Ph^dre," act iv. scene 2, has imitated this piece, and par- 
ticularly these two lines of Rotrou : — 

" Dans les longues rigueurs d'une prison cruelle, 
Je n'ai point implor^ ta puissance immortelle." 



352 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

J'ai de monstres divers parg^ chaque element 
Sans Jeter vers le ciel tin regard seulement ; 
Mon bras fut mon secours ; et jamais le tonnerre 
N'a, qnand j'ai combattu, gronde centre la terre."^ 

Bj slightly diminishing the quickness of Seneca's 
movement, Eotrou has introduced into the piece some 
fine imagery. 

In the " Antigone," that princess beholds from the 
ramparts of the town her brother Polynices, from 
whom she has been separated for a year, and thus 
addresses him : — 

" Polynice, avancez, portez ici la vue ; 
Soiiffrez qu'apres un an votre soeur vous salue ; 
Malheureuse ! et pourqnoi ne le puis-je autrement ? 
Quel destin entre nous met cet eloignement ? 
Apres un si long temps la soeur revolt son frere, 
Et ne peut lui donner le salut ordinaire ; 
Un seul embrassement ne nous est pas permis ; 
Nous parlons sdpar^s comme deux ennemis." ^ 

This touching passage is not an imitation. 

The " Iphigenie " also contains some ideas which 
properly belong to Rotrou, and which E-acine has not 
disdained to imitate. ^ We do not, however, yet 

1 Rotrou, " Hercule Mourant," act iii. scene 2, 

2 Rotrou, " Antigone," act ii. scene 2. 

3 Among others, these lines, which, do not occm' in Euripides, in 
whose tragedy Clytemnestra speaks only with respect of the blood of 
Atreus : — 

" Va, pere indigne d'elle, et digne fils d'Atree, 
Par qui la loi du sang fut si peu rev^ree, 
Et qui crut comme toi faire un exploit fameux, 
Au repas qu'il dressa des corps de ses neveux." — 

Rotrou, "Iphigenie en Aulide," act iv. scene 4. 

" Vous ne dementez point une race funeste ; 
Oui, vous etes du sang d'Atree et de Thyeste : 

t 



1 



JEAN ROTROd. 353 

discover the presence of that talent which leaves 
traces of itself, because it follows in no one's footsteps ; 
and Rotrou was not yet aware of the style of com- 
position best suited for the display of his powers. 
" Belisaire," a drama in which he had attempted to 
impart to tragedy the tone assigned to it by Corneille, 
is perhaps one of his worst works. At length, 
however, he met with the subject of '' Venceslas.'' 

This subject does not belong to him ; he borrowed 
it of Don Francisco de Roxas,^ just as Corneille had 
borrowed the '' Cid " from Guillen de Castro. We 
consequently find in " Yenceslas,'^ as in the " Cid,'' a 
considerable number of fine lines which have been 
copied from the Spanish original. We find even 
more than this ; for whole passages, and the arrange- 
ment of the scenes, are exactly the same in each. 
The entrance is the same, and so is the denouement^ 
except that, in the Spanish piece, Ladislas says 
nothing more about his love for Cassandra, who 
requests and obtains permission to retire to her 



Bourreau de votre fille, il ne vous reste enfin 
Que d'en faire a sa m^re un horrible festin." 

Racine, " Iphig^nie," act iv. scene 4. 
The equivocal and ironical answers which Racine puts at first into the 
mouth of Clytemnestra, when Agamemnon demands of her her daughter, 
are not copied from Etu-ipides. In Rotrou, it is Iphigenia who begins the 
scene with her father by a dialogue of this kind ; which is much less 
becoming. — See Rotrou, " Iphig^nie," act iv. scene 2 ; and Racine, 
" Iphig^nie," act iv. scenes 3, 4. 

^ The original piece by Francisco de Roxas is to be found in the 
National Library at Paris, No. 6380, B. Its title is : — " No ay ser Padre 
siendo Re," the literal translation of which is, There is no being a Father, 
uhile yoti are a King. 



354 corneille's contemporaeies. 

estates. Rotrou, led astray by the denouement of 
the " Cid," did not remark the difference of the 
circumstances in the two dramas. He did not feel 
that the spectator, though delighted to behold, at 
least in hope, Rodrigue's innocent and reciprocated 
affection crowned with success, is, on the contrary, 
revolted by the idea that the guilty Ladislas may one 
day obtain, as the reward of his furious passion, the 
hand of a woman who hates him, and whom he has 
just given so many fresh causes to detest him. * 

^ Marmontel, among other corrections which he introduced into Rotrou's 
tragedy, was desirous to alter the denouement ; in the last scene, therefore, 
when Ladislas said to Cassandra : — 

" Ma gr^ce est en vos mains." 



Voilk done ton supplice 



she immediately replied, stabbing him to the heart. This denouement, 
which is in greater conformity to theatrical effect than to truth, is out 
of all haimony with the modern tone which prevails throughout the piece. 
Nevertheless, Marmontel's corrections were approved by the Mar^chal de 
Duras, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and as such entrusted with 
the theatrical arrangements of the Court. He wished to have this corrected 
edition of " Venceslas " performed at Versailles, and ordered Lekain to 
learn his part according to the new arrangement. Lekain, who did not like 
Marmontel, made as many objections as he dared ; but the Marshal spoke so 
positively that he was forced at least to feign submission. He, however, 
applied secretly to Colardeau for other corrections, which he substituted in 
the place of those by Marmontel. " Venceslas," thus performed, met with 
great success at Court ; and the Marshal, who had not perceived the sub- 
stitution, was highly delighted at the happy result of his firmness. There 
is reason, however, to believe that the trick was speedily discovered. 
Marmontel himself informs us that, his *' Venceslas " was performed at 
Court and in Paris, but that the Court alone approved of the new 
denouement, whereas it displeased the Parisian public ; which obliged him 
to abandon it and return to the old one. See the " Chefs-d'oeuvres 
dramatiques," Examination of " Venceslas :" Paris, 1773. All the cor- 
rections have since been abandoned, and, with the exception of a few 
expressions, the " Venceslas " performed at the present day is entirely 
Rotrou's own. 



JEAN ROTROU. 355 

Reflection had not yet taught dramatic authors 
how greatly difference of feehng changes the moral 
effect of two actions apparently similar. With this 
exception, the Spanish piece contains the principal 
features of the last act of " Venceslas ; " ^ and it is 
only in the plot of the drama, and in the circum- 
stances which lead to the catastrophe, that Rotrou 
has departed to any great extent from his original. 
In the work of Roxas, Prince Roger (the Ladislas of 
the French piece) does not appear to have any 
intention to marry Cassandra ; but feehng great love 
for her, and correspondingly great jealousy of the 
duke, whom he regards as his rival, he is not very 
delicate as to the means which he employs to rob 
him of his mistress. Those dishonourable attempts 
which Rotrou has placed in the introduction to his 
play, although Cassandra reminds us of them rather 
too frequently and too energetically, ^ are put into 
practice by the Spanish author. Roger forms a plan 
for introducing himself by night into the chamber 

^ With the exception only of a few, among which is this fine line of 
Venceslas, when he learns that the revolted populace intend to force him 
to revoke the sentence of Ladislas : — 

" Et me vouloir injuste est ne me vouloir plus." 

There will also be observed, in the French imitation, a livelier and closer 
turn of style than in the Spanish author. The piece is, on the whole, 
better adapted to produce an effect upon the French stage, the spectators 
of which like to see a thought included within a single line. 

- " Foul desires," " unclean pleasures," '' free conversations," " infamous 
messages," are expressions used far too familiarly by Cassandra, and which 
are now omitted in the performance of the piece. 

AA 2 



356 CORNEILLE's CONTEMPORAEIES. 

of his mistress ; but Cassandra, being informed of 
this design, communicates it to the king, that his 
authority may deUver her from Roger's persecutions. 
When Roger arrives, he finds. Cassandra alone in 
a. room, and before she is able to recognise him, 
he puts out the light, and prepares to use any violence 
that may be necessary for the accompHshment of his 
desires. But Cassandra in alarm has escaped from 
the room under favour of the darkness, and left the 
prince tete-d-tete with the chair on which she had 
been sitting, and where he is greatly astonished to 
find her no longer. Whilst he is looking for her, 
arrives Prince Alexander,^ who is secretly married 
to Cassandra, and who, having been absent from 
Court for a whole month, in consequence of a quarrel 
with his brother, has come, under cover of night, 
to see his wife. The two brothers meet ; the king 
arrives ; they conceal themselves ; and this adventure 
produces an imbroglio, the result of which is to 
persuade the prince that the duke is the husband of 
Cassandra. Furious with rage, he introduces himself 
a second time into her chamber, finds her asleep 
in the arms of Alexander, whom he kills without 
recognising him or waking him from his sleep. 
Cassandra, on opening her eyes, finds her husband 
dead, and the dagger left in the wound reveals to her 

^ Whom the Spanish author, and Rotrou after him, call the InfatUe 
Alexander. Rotrou also introduced an Infante Theodore into this play. 



JEAI^ ROTROU. 357 

the name of the murderer. Such are the incidents 
upon which the Spanish play is founded, eked out by 
the witticisms of some valets and the bombastic 
descriptions of the prince. 

Corneille had taught the poets of France that such 
means were not admissible into true tragedy. Those 
devised by Rotrou are not much better ; and the 
idea upon which the whole plot of the piece hangs, 
namely the promise which the king has made to the 
duke to grant him the first favour he may ask, what- 
ever that may be, is a very bad spring of action.^ It 
may also be said that the fury of Ladislas, who twice 
silences the duke just when he was about to declare 
his love for the Princess Theodore, is a very puerile 
trick to prolong the misunderstanding which leads to 
the catastrophe. 

If Rotrou could lay claim, in " Yenceslas,'^ to 
nothing more than these puerile inventions, it would 
not be worth our while to inquire how far they may 
be said to belong to him ; but the character of 
Ladislas — so fiery and impetuous, so interesting even 
on account of the violence of those passions which 
render it dangerous and criminal — Rotrouhas appro- 
priated to himself by developing it in its full propor- 
tions. The Spanish author has exhibited Roger's 

* The same idea is employed in "Don Lope de Cardonne," Rotrou's last 
work, which is very similar in other respects to " Venceslas ; " which 
similarity leads me to believe that Rotrou bon'owed this romantic invention 
also from the Spanish drama. 



358 coeneille's contemporaries. 

pride only in his hatred of the duke and of his 
brother ; he has manifested the vehemence of his 
love only by the impetuosity of his desires, and the 
fury of his jealousy by the crime which it leads him 
to commit ; he has also represented him as much 
more harsh in his treatment of his father, and has 
never displayed in him anything but the ferocity of 
an indomitable character, without mingling with it 
that tenderness of passion which supplies the means 
of moderating its violence, and, to use the expression 
of Venceslas, 

" Malgre tons ses delaiits le rend encore aimable." 

Rotrou was fully aware of the storms and conflicts 
which a despised and jealous love could not fail to 
excite in so haughty, so brilliant, and so imperious a 
nature ; and he has represented its transports, weak- 
nesses, and vicissitudes with a truthfulness previously 
unknown to our drama. Corneille had depicted love 
in conflict with duty ; but love had not yet been seen 
in conflict with itself, tormented by its own violence, 
alternately suppliant and furious, and manifesting 
itself as much by excess of anger as by excess of 
tenderness. Granting some slight indulgence to those 
deficiencies in propriety and faults of style which are 
characteristic of the authors of this period, where 
shall we find a more faithful picture of the vicissitudes 
of passion than in the scene in which Ladislas, stung 



JEAN ROTROU. 359 

to the quick by Cassandra's contempt, swears that his 
love for her is changing into hatred 1 

" AUez, iudigne objet de mon inquietude ; 
J'ai trop longtemps souffert de voti-e ingratitude ; 
Je devois vous connoitre, et ne m'engager pas 
Aux trompeuses douceurs de vos cniels appas. " 

***** 

De vos superbes lois ma raison degag^e 

A gudri mon amour, et croit I'avoir song^e. 

De I'indigne brasier qui consumoit mon coeur, 

II ne me reste plus que la seicle rongeur. 

Que la honte et I'liorreur de vous avoir aimee 

Laisseront k jamais sur ce front imprimee. 

Qui, je rougis, ingrate, et mon propre courroux 

Ne me peut pardonner ce que j'ai fait poiu' vous. 

Je vevix que la memoire efface de ma vie 

Le souvenir du temps que je vous ai servie. 

J'^tois mort pour la gloire, et je n'ai pas vecu 

Tant que ce lacbe coeur s'est dit votre vaiacu, 

Ce n'est que d'aujourd'hui qu'il vit et qu'il respire, 

D'aujourd'hui qu'il renonce au joug de votre empire, 

Et qu'avec ma raison, mes yeux et lui d' accord 

D^testent votre vue a I'egal de la mort." 

After a haughty reply, Cassandra retires ; upon 
which Ladislas, in despair, conjures his sister to call 
her back : — 

'' Ma sceur, au nom d'amour, et par piti^ des larmes 
Que ce coeur enchants donne encore k ses charmes, 
Si vous voulez d'un frere empecher le tr^pas, 
Suivez cette insensible et retenez ses pas. 

THEODORE. 

La retenir, mon frere, apres I'avoir bannie ? 

LADISLAS. 

Ah ! centre ma raison servez sa tyrannic ! 
Je veux d^savouer ce coeur s^ditieux, 
La servir, I'adorer, et mourir h. ses yeux. 

***** 

Que je la voie au moins si je ue la possfede ; 
Mon mal ch<5rit sa cause et voit pen son rcmcdc. 



360 corneille's contemporaries. 

Quand mon coeur a ma voix a feint de consentir, 
II en ^toit charmd ; je Ten veux d^mentir ; 
Je mourois, je brtilois, je I'adorois dans I'&me, 
Et le ciel a pour moi fait un sort tout de flamme." 

His sister, in compliance with his request, is about 
to go in search of Cassandra, when he exclaims — 

" Me laissez-vous, ma soeur, en ce d^sordre extreme ? 

THEODORE. 

J'allois la retenir. 



Eh ! ne voyez-vous pas 
Quel arrogant mepris precipite ses pas ? 
Avee combien d'orgueil elle s'est retiree ? 
Quel implacable haine elle m'a d^claree ? " 

When at last his vexation has gained the ascen- 
dancy ; when Ladislas has determined to subdue his 
own feelings even so far as to promote the interests 
of the duke with his mistress ; when he has en- 
couraged him to explain to the king the nature of 
the favour to which he aspires, and which, in the 
opinion of Ladislas, can be, nothing else than the 
hand of Cassandra, — at the very moment when the 
fatal name is about to be pronounced, incapable of 
further self-restraint, and falling once more under 
the sway of his love and jealousy, Ladislas gives 
utterance at length to the transports which he 
had vainly attempted to repress, and, interrupting 
the duke for the second time, forces him to re- 
sume that silence which he had previously urged 



JEAN ROTROU. 861 

him so strenuously to break. As I have already 
observed, this repeated interruption is only a defective 
means of prolonging a necessary misapprehension. It 
is undoubtedly of great importance to Ladislas that 
the duke should not prefer his request, as the king 
would at once grant that which he besought ; but 
this romantic combination cannot be sufficiently kept 
in mind by the spectator, nor is it likely to strike 
him so forcibly as to lead him to excuse the puerility, 
and at the same time, the brutality of the movement. 
This movement is nevertheless brought about in a 
very natural manner ; and if the passion of Ladislas 
had only been pourtrayed under another form, it 
would most certainly have produced a very powerful 
effect. 

Other deficiencies are also observable in the execu- 
tion of this admirably-conceived character. The 
manner in which Ladislas expresses to Cassandra 
the hatred and contempt which he fancies he feels 
for her, too often justifies that ironical exclama- 
tion of the duchess : " ! what noble rage." It is 
not pleasing to hear a prince call a lady of his court 
" insolent,^' telling her coarsely that he might desire 
to have her as his mistress, but not as his wife, and 
that he would very soon have overcome her disdain 
if he had thought it worth while to employ violence. 
Rotrou has been justly blamed for casting odium 
upon a prince whom he intends to crown with honour 



36£ corneille's contemporaries. 

at the end of the piece, by teUing him, through his 
father, in the first act : — 

" S'il faut qu'k cent rapports ma cr^ance reponde, 
Rarement le soleil rend sa lumiere au monde 
Que le premier rayon qu'il repand ici-bas 
N'y d^couvre quelqu'un de vos assassinats." ' 

So great was the want of delicacy of a time when 
taste had not yet learned to measure things aright, 
when talent, and sometimes even genius, felt a strong 
inclination to exaggerate both means and effects, 
when force was synonymous with violence, when 
violence was manifested by ferocity, when frankness 
was carried to brutality, and politeness degraded 
into flattery. But, beneath this offensive mode of 
expression and this repulsive exaggeration, we shall 
everywhere meet with indications of nature, — a 
strong, vehement, passionate nature ; and 'we shall 
ever feel convinced that Rotrou was able both to 
imagine and to pourtray it in all its forms. 

Nor is " Yenceslas '' the only proof that he pos- 
sessed an original talent, which did not derive its 

^ The Spanish author says even more than this : — 

" En essas calles y pla9as, 
Siempre que el aurora argenta, 
Quando ha de adorar con rayos 
El padre de las estrellas, 
Se hallan muertas mil personas." 

" In the streets and public places, whenever Aurora enlightens them, 
when she comes to worship the father of the stars with her rays, a . 
thousand persons are found dead." 



JEAN ROTROU. 363 

inspiration from the spirit and habits of his time. 
Another of Rotrou's works, " Laure Persecutee,'' 
which has fallen into that oblivion in which, in many 
respects, it deserves to remain, nevertheless contains 
a scene worthy to take rank with the best scenes of 
" Venceslas," and which, if purged of a few defects 
in taste, would not do discredit to many master- 
pieces of a higher order of perfection. Orontee, 
Prince of Hungary, loves and is beloved by Laura, 
a young girl of inferior rank. His friends have 
succeeded in persuading him that his mistress is 
unfaithful to him. In rage and despair, he demands 
the restoration of his letters, which Laura returns to 
him with touching gentleness and tenderness ; and 
Orontee swears never to see her again. His con- 
fidant, Octave, nevertheless, when in search of him, 
suspects that he will find him at Laura's door, and 
there, in fact, he finds him, lying on the threshold, 
weeping. 

OCTAVE. 

" * * Quoi ! Seignem-, et si tard et saus suite? 

ORONTEE. 

Que veux-tu? sana dessein, sans conseil, sans conduite, 
Mon coeur, soUicit^ d'un invincible effort, 
Se laisse aveugl^ment attirer h, son sort ; 
Pour n'etre pas tdmoin de ma folie extreme, 
Moi-meme je voudroLs etre ici sans moi-meme. 
Qu'xin favorable soin t'amene sur mes pas ! 
Saisi, trouble, coufus, je ne me connois pas: 
Et ta seule presence, en ce besoin offerte, 
Arrete mon e.^prit sur le point de sa perte." 

Octave, who is a party to the deception which has 



364. CORNEILLE's CONTEMPOEARIES. 

been practised upon Orontee, and who, if the prince 
sees Laura, dreads that his perfidy will be unmasked, 
tries to animate him to firmness of conduct, and 
says : — 

" II faut payer de force en semblables combats : 
Qui combat mollement veut bien ne vaincre pas. 

ORONTEE. 

Je I'avoue k toi seul, oui, je I'avoue, Octave, 

En cessant d'etre amant je deviens moins qu'esclave; 

Et si je la voyois, je crois qu'k son aspect, 

Tu me verrois mourir de crainte et de respect. 

Je ne sais par quel sort ou quelle fr^uesie 

Mon amour pent durer avec ma jalousie ; 

Mais je sens en effet que, malgre cet affront, 

Dont la marque si fraiche est encor sur mon front, 

Le ddpit ne sauroit I'emporter sur la flamme, 

Et toute mon amour est encor dans mon 8,me." 

Octave, in greater alarm than ever, endeavours to 
overcome his weakness by representing its probable 
consequences, and says : — 

*'Laure, en un mot, Seigneur, n'est pas loin de la paix. 

ORONTEE. 

Moi ! que je souffre Laure et lui parle jamais ! 
Que jamais je m'arrete, et jamais je me montre 
Ou Laure doive aller, oh. Laure se rencontre ! 
Que je visite Laure et la caresse un jour ! 
Que Laure puisse encor me donner de I'amour !" 

The conversation continues in this way between 
the prince and his confidant for some time, and 
whenever it is not animated by passion, it is laden 
with subtleties and plays upon words which are too 
common in works of this period, for it to be necessary 



JEAN ROTEOU. 305 

for me to quote anj examples/ But suddenly the 
prince interrupts the dialogue, and, without giving 
any answer to Octave, exclaims : — 

** Qu'on m'a fait un plaisir et triste et ddplaisant, 
Et qu'on m'a mis en peine en me d^sabusant ! 
Qu'on a bless^ mon coeur en gudrissant ma vue ! 
Car enfin mon erreur me plaisoit ineonnue : 
D'aucun trouble d'esprit je n'etois agit^ 
Et Tabus me servoit plus que la \6rit6. 
Moi ! que du choix de Laure enfin je me repente ! 
Que jamais a mes yeux Laure ne se presente ! 
Que Lam-e ne soit plus dedans mon souvenir ! 
Que de Laure mon coeur n'ose m'entretenir ! 
Que pour Laure mon sein n'enferme qu'une roche ! 
Que je ne touche k Laure et jamais ne I'approche ! 
Que pour Laure mes voeux aient 6t6 superflus ! 
Que je n'entende Lam-e et ne lui parle plus ! 
Frappe, je veux la voir. 

OCTAVE. 

Seigneur. 

ORONTEE. 

Frappe, te dis-je. 

OCTAVE. 

Mais Bongez-vous k quoi votre transport m'oblige ? 

ORONTEE, 

Ne me conteste point. 

OCTAVE. 

Quel est votre dessein ? 

ORONTEE. 

Fay tot, ou je te mets ce poignard dans le seiu. 

OCTAVE. 

Eh bien ! je vais heurter. 



^ " Que veux-tu ? mon attente etoit une chimera 
Qui porta des enfans semblables k leur m^re : 
Comme je b§,tissois sur un sable mouvant, 
J'ai produit des soupirs qvii ne sont que du vent." 



366 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

ORONTEE. 

Non ! n'en fais rieu, arrete ; 
Mon honneur me retient quand mon amour est pr^te, 
Et Tune m'aveuglant, I'atiti'e m'ouvre les yeux. 

OCTAVE. 

L'honneur, assur^ment, vovis conseille le mieux. 
Retirons-nous, 

ORONTEE. 

Attends que ce transport se passe. 
Approche cependant ; sieds-toi, prends cette place ; 
Et pour me divertir, cherche en ton souvenir 
Quelque histoire d'amour de quoi m'entretenir. 

OCTAVE. 

Ecoutez done : Un jour .... 

ORONTEE revant. 

Un jour cette infidelle 
M'a vu I'aimer au point d'oublier tout pour elle ; 
Un jour j'ai vu son coeur repondre h, mon amour ; 
J'ai cru quun chaste hymen nous uniroit un jour; 
Un jour je me suis vu combld d'aise et de gloire . . . 
Mais ce jour-lk n'est plus . . . Acheve ton histoire, 

OCTAVE. 

Un jour done dans un bal un seigneur .... 

ORONTEE. 

Fut-ce moi ? 
Car ce fut dans un bal qu'elle re9ut ma foi ; 
Que mes yeux ^blouis de sa premiere vue 
Adorerent d'abord cette belle inconnue, 
Qu'ils livrerent mon coeur h, I'empire des siens, 
Et que j'offris mes bras a mes premiers liens. 
Mais quelle tyrannic ai-je enfin ^prouv^e ! 
Octave, e'est assez, I'histoire est achev^e." 

Passing over a few improprieties, and affected 
repetitions, we fearlessly ask, are not these emo- 
tions the same as we find afterwards displayed by 
Pyrrhus, Orosmane, and Vendome ? Is not this 
love in all its power and all its weakness ? 



JEAN ROTROU. 367 

It would be difficult to say whether this scene 
belongs entirely to Rotrou ; the energy of its last cha- 
racteristic, in particular, is marked by a singularity 
which would seem to belong to Shakespeare and 
Othello, rather than to a Frenchman of the seven- 
teenth century. The sources from which Eotrou 
derived his materials were so numerous and varied, 
and the originals that he imitated have become so 
foreign to our knowledge, that we cannot pretend to 
have discovered them all, or to distinguish, in the 
works of the French poet, that which really belongs 
to him ; but, as regards that which he borrowed, he 
is entitled to the merit of having discovered, felt, 
and rendered it. He is equally capable sometimes 
of discerning and expressing, with great keenness of 
observation, those gentler and more reserved emo- 
tions, the description of which, though they belong 
to nature, enters more into the province of comedy. 
In " La Soeur," a young girl, alarmed at not having 
seen her lover during the day, is anxious to find 
some means of bringing him to her side without 
compromising herself, so she orders her servant to go 
to him, with these instructions : — 

" Confesse-lui ma crainte et dis-lui mou martyre ; 
Que I'acces qu'un marilui donue en sa maison 
Me le i-end, en un mot, suspect de trahison. 
Mais non, ne touche rien de ce jaloux ombrage ; 
C'est k sa vanity donner trop d'avantage ; 
Dis lui que puisqu'il m'aime, et qu'il salt qu'aux amans 
Une heure sans se voir est nu an de tourmens, 



368 coeneille's contemporaeies. 



II m'afflige aujourd'hui d'une trop longue absence. 
ISTon, il me voudroit voir avec trop de licence, 
Dis-lui que dans le doute oh. me tient sa sant^ . . 
Mais puisque tu I'as vu, puis-je en avoir dout^ ? 
Flattant trop un amant, une amante inexperte 
Par ses soins superflus en hasarde la perte. 
Va, Lydie, et dis-lui ce que, pour mon repos, 
Tu crois de plus s^ant et de plus k propos ; 
Va, rends-moi I'esp^rance, ou fais que j'y renonce ; 
Ne dis rien si tu veux ; mais j'attends sa rdponse." 



This last line is charming. 

After reading these examples, it is impossible not 
to admit that Rotrou possessed a rare and delicate 
talent for depicting the tender passions and secret 
movements of the heart. Unfortunately, he did not 
yield sufficiently often to his natural impulse. After 
having produced " Yenceslas," he tried, in " Cosroes," 
to imitate JCorneille ; and his work was characterised 
by all the defects of imitators, excepting exaggeration 
of the manner of his model. " Cosroes " is a rather 
well-arranged tragedy, in which political interests are 
discussed with considerable wisdom, and in which 
the author has succeeded in representing, with suf- 
ficient interest, the various events of a revolution 
which deprives a king of his throne, and substitutes 
in his place that one of his sons whom he intended to 
rob of his legitimate rights, in order to bestow the 
crown upon a younger brother. But there is nothing 
in the piece to strike the imagination, and nothing to 
excite any strong curiosity. Siroes, the eldest son 
of Cosroes, sometimes yielding Avith grief to the 



JEAN ROTEOU. 369 

necessities of his position and the advice of his ad- 
herents, who compel him to condemn his father and 
brother, and sometimes giving way to those natural 
feelings Tvhich he has had so much difficulty to 
overcome, is perhaps a very natural character ; but 
he does not possess sufficient ambition, or sufficient 
virtue, for the stage. The same may be said of 
Merdesanes, his brother ; who at first" refuses the 
crown which Cosroes wishes to confer upon him, to 
the prejudice of his elder brother, but afterwards 
accepts it. There is nothing sufficiently emphatic or 
determinate in this tragedy to support its pretensions 
to revive the recollection of Corneille. The early 
scenes, however, between Siroes and his mother-in- 
law, may have suggested the idea of "Nicomede.''^ 

After " Cosroes,'' ".Florimonde '' and " Don Lope 
de Cardonne," probably imitations from the Spanish, 
and which are remarkable only by the resemblance 
of the latter to " Venceslas,'' terminated the dramatic 
career of Rotrou. He had been married for some 
time to Marguerite Le Camus, was the father of three 
children, and probably feeling determined to intro- 
duce into his conduct a little more of the regularity 
required by his new position, he had bought 
the office of Lieutenant of the bailiwick of Dreux. 
Notwithstanding the exactitude with which it would 
appear that he discharged the duties of this post, 

^ "Nicomkle" appeared, in 1652, and " Cosroes " in 1648. 

B B 



370 coeneille's contempoearies. 

he was at Paris when he learned that Dreux was 
ravaged by a contagious disease, and that death 
had removed, or fear frightened away, the autho- 
rities whose business it was to maintain pubhc order, 
and to strive to arrest the progress of the evil. He 
set out at once for the post of duty ; and at a time 
which called for the manifestation of the noble and 
excellent quahties of every lofty soul, he devoted 
himself, without hesitation or self-regard, to the 
performance of those duties which were required 
for the public welfare and care for every individual. 
In vain did his brother and friends urge him to provide 
for his own safety ; his only answer was that his 
presence was needed, and he terminates his letter 
with these words : " It is not that the peril in which 
I am placed is not very great, since at the moment 
at which I am writing the bells are toUing for the 
twenty-second person who has . died to-day ; it 
will be my turn when it shall please God." These 
words, which may be regarded as a model of the 
simplicity and calmness of true courage,' sustained 
by the conviction of duty, are the last which remain 
to us of Hotrou ; for he was attacked by the malady 
a few days afterwards, and died on the 27th of June, 
1650, in the forty-first year of his age. ^ 

1 The death of Rotrou was proposed, in 1810, as the subject for the 
prize for poetry awarded by the French Academy ; and the prize was 
gained by M. Millevoye. 



JEAN EOTEOU. 371 

Thus perished, in the prime of his Hfe, character, 
and talents, a man, who, if we may judge of him 
by the last act of his life, was destined to give 
a memorable example of virtues whose exercise 
had been only suspended by the impetuosity of 
youth ; and a poet, who, from the lofty flight he 
had just taken, might have been thought destined 
to discover new beauties in the art of song. 
All that remains of Rotrou gives us the idea 
of a man who was not strong enough to rise 
above his age, but who was worthy of a time capable 
of giving him better support. Rotrou is wanting 
in that invention which can produce, arrange, and 
direct the incidents of a great drama ; but it is 
not easy to assign limits to the splendid efiects 
which he might have derived from the emotions 
of the heart and the movement of the passions. 
His style, though frequently obscure, unsuitable, 
and forced, sometimes receives from the senti- 
ment by which it is animated a natural elegance, 
which a little more art and study might have 
rendered more familiar to him. In a word, though 
he makes us regret that he was not all that he might 
have been, Rotrou rises far above the common herd 
of his contemporaries, who could not but have been 
what they w^ere. 



B B 2 



PAUL SCARRON. 

(1610—1660.) 

Theee are periods in history when a craving after 
pleasure is displayed with almost furious vehemence, 
although it proves to be nothing but a craving after 
dissipation. At such periods, diversions destitute of 
gaiety are abundant ; the noise of festivity is not 
accompanied by the sounds of joy : splendour must 
be combined with every pleasure to prove that it is 
a pleasure ; and those men who hasten in pursuit 
of enjoyments, surprised to find them so cold and 
empty, complain of the ennui connected with that J 
agitation with which they cannot dispense. 

It is especially in times of public misfortune that 
this moral infirmity exhibits itself At such times, 
the soul, tormented by painful feelings, tries to rid 
itself of its own existence, and to dissipate, in 
momentary enjoyments, that strength which it could 
not employ without pain ; it issues continually out 
of itself, and goes begging the means of self-oblivion 
in every direction ; but it meets itself everywhere, 
and carries its sorrows wherever it goes. Pleasures 



i 



PAUL SCAREON. 373 

enter without efibrt, and take up a permanent abode 
onlj where thej are received by happiness ; when 
sought out bj misfortune, they are either rejected or 
corrupted. Great calamities are almost invariably 
accompanied by dissoluteness of manners ; and 
excess of suffering or affright casts men into excessive 
indulgence in diversions ; but there is nothing to 
indicate that, at these fatal epochs, they have ever 
found joy in their amusements. 

Joy, on the other hand, a taste rather than a 
craving for pleasure, a capacity for finding amuse- 
ment everywhere, and a gaiety as natural as it is 
frolicsome, seem to be, at least for the wealthier 
classes, the appanage of certain periods, which, 
though not strictly speaking periods of happiness, 
afford the means and justify the hope of its attain- 
ment. These are times when there is a kind of 
youthfulness in the minds of men — an intoxication of 
life and strength — an activity which diffuses itself 
over all objects, because it meets with nothing which 
it deems worthy to occupy its entire attention. To 
minds thus disposed, the present moment is sufficient, 
for they devote themselves to it with all the energy 
of their faculties ; they may allow themselves to be 
carried away by every pleasure, for to them all 
pleasures are equally alluring ; even excesses are then 
endowed with a natural attractiveness, and a vein of 
originality, which will bring a smile to the counte- 



374 corneille's contemporaeies. 

nance even of that wisdom which condemns them ; 
and, hke the folhes of youth, they carry with them 
their own excuse and almost their seductiveness. 

" Tel fvit le temps de la bonne Regence," 

the Regency of Anne of Austria, which Saint- 
Evremond so bitterly regretted : — 

*' Temps ou regnoit une heureuse abondance, 
Temps ou la ville aussi bien que la cour 
Ne respiroient que les jeux et I'amour." ^ 

A time when, as Bautru said, " Jionnete homme and 
bonnes mceurs were incompatible." ^ Morality was 
not, indeed, despised, but it was never thought of; 
no fear was felt of serious subjects, but they could 
never be treated with greater seriousness than the 
most frivolous matters ; for frivolous matters were of 

^ Saint- Evremond, " CEuvres," vol. iii. p. 294. 
2 Ibid. p. 38. The honnete homme was then synonymous with " the 
member of fashionable society " ; he was at once " the man of gallantry," 
and " the man of the world." This name implied a certain elegance of 
manners unattainable by any but those who moved in the highest circles. 
A good address, ready wit, and gentlemanly manners were indispensable 
requisites. " You do not pass in the world as a connoisseur of poetry," 
says Pascal, " if you do not put on the insignia of a poet, or as clever in 
mathematics unless you wear those of a mathematician. But your true 
honnetes gens will have no insignia, and make no difference between the 
profession of a poet and that of an embroiderer. They are not called either 
poets or geometricians, but they are the judges of all such. You cannot 
guess their intentions ; they will speak on any subject that may be men- 
tioned when they enter. You cannot perceive that they possess one quality 
more than another, except the necessity of bringing it into use ; but then you 
call to mind that it is equally important to their character that it should 
not be said of them that they speak: well when no question of language is 
under discussion, and that it should be said that they do speak well when 
such a question is under debate." It was essential that the honnete homme 
should always be able to adapt himself to the tone of the society in which 
he might happen to be placed. 



PAUL SCARRON. 375 

great importance in the eyes of people whose whole 
existence was spent in the pursuit of pleasure. Civil 
troubles occurred to interrupt the " games and love " 
in which their life was passed, but love continued 
still to be the great business even of those who aimed 
at reforming or overturning the State. It was love for 
the Duchess de Longueville that induced La Roche- 
foucauld to join the party of the Fronde ; and Cardinal 
de Retz, while as yet a mere coadjutor, made use of 
its powers to gain over to his side several ladies, who 
proved important auxiliaries in this children's war. 
The heroes of the Fronde, on their return from a 
skirmish with the troops of Mazarin, clothed in their 
armour, and adorned with their scarfs, hastened to 
present themselves to the ladies who filled the apart- 
ments of the Duchess de Longueville. The violins 
struck up within the house ; outside, in the pubHc 
street, the trumpets resounded ; and Noirmoutier, in 
delight, pictured to himself Galatee and Lindamor 
besieged in Marcilli. * The Marshal d'Hocquincourt ^ 
promised Peronne to Mme. de Montbazon, " the 
fairest of the fair " ; ^ and men frequently had less 
reasonable motives than his for deciding on their 
course. Rouillac, brave and reckless, came to offer 
his services to the coadjutor, who was then at the 



' Characters in " Astrcc." See the " Memoirs of De Retz," vol, i. p. 213. 
2 Afterwards a Marshal of France, then Governor of Peronne, 
^ " Memoirs of de Retz," vol. i. p. 271. 



376 cokneille's cqntempoearies. 

height of his quarrels with the Prince ; CanillaCy 
equally brave and reckless, came at the same time, 
with the same intentions ; but, on seeing Rouillac, he 
withdrew, saying, " It is not fair that the two greatest 
madcaps in the kingdom should both belong to the 
same party ; I shall go to the Hotel Conde : " ^ and 
thither he went. A whim was then a sufficient 
motive ; a joke furnished a peremptory argument ; 
men laughed at themselves almost as much as at their 
friends ; as far as raillery was concerned, neither 
party could be said to have the advantage ; and in 
those important cabals which alarmed the Court and 
caused the minister to tremble, it would, perhaps, 
have been difficult to find a dozen men whose chief 
object was not to amuse themselves with that which 
seemed so passionately to absorb their energies. 

At this period lived Scarron. He had received 
from nature a mind and character well adapted to 
conform to the disposition of the times in which his 
life was passed ; and fortune seemed to have secured 
him a position of sufficient wealth and rank to enable 
him to yield without constraint to the tastes of his 
mind and the inclinations of his character. 

Paul Scarron was born in 1610 or 1611. His 
father, Paul Scarron, was a councillor of the Parlia- 
ment at Paris, a man of ancient family,^ and possessing, 

^ " Memoirs of De Retz," vol. ii. p. 364. 
"^ Originally of Moncallier, in Piedmont, where it had resided since the 



PAUL SCAEEON. 377 

it is said, an income of more than twenty thou- 
sand Hvres ; a considerable fortune for that time, 
which his son might hope he would have to share 
only with two sisters, born of the same marriage. 
The second marriage of Councillor Scarron, however, 
diminished the expectations of his elder children, and 
his new wife did her best to nullify them altogether. 
She obtained such influence over the mind, property, 
and affairs of her negligent husband, that, if we are 
to believe Scarron, " when she was once very ill, and 
her husband feared he would be left a widower, he 
entreated her to leave him a pension of six hundred 
livres after her death." ^ Young Scarron, though 



tMrteenth century. (See Moreri's Dictionary.) He was a relative of the 
Scarrons of Vaujour, one of whom, Jean Scarron, was appointed Provost of 
the merchants in 1664 ; another, Michel Scarron, a Councillor of State, 
married his daughter Catherine to the Mar^chal d'Aumont. During the 
Regency of Anne of Austria, there lived a certain Pierre Scarron, an uncle 
or cousin of the poet, who is noticed in the memoirs of the time for the 
length of his beard, an oi'nament which a few grave personages then retained 
in opposition to the customs of the age. One day, a lackey said to him at 
table, " My lord, there is some dirt on the beard of your greatness." 
" Why don't you say," rejoined one of the company, " upon the greatness 
of your beard ?" (" Menagiana," vol. i. p. 284.) Mol^, the keeper of the 
seals, who was remarkable for a singularity of the same kind, said, when he 
saw Pierre Scarron, " That casts my beard into the shade." (Ibid. p. 285.) 
1 " A deed or requisition, or whatever you please, on behalf of Paul 
Scarron, senior of the invalids of France, Anne Scarron, a poor ^vidow, twice 
pillaged dui'ing the blockade, and Frances Scarron, who is ill-paid by her 
lodger — children, by the first marriage, of the late Master Paul Scarron, 
Councillor of the Parliament, all three veiy ill at ease, both in their persons 
and properties, defendants ; against Charles Robin, lord of Sigoigne, husband 
of Madelaine Scarron, Daniel Boileau, lord of Plessis, husband of Claude 
Scarron, and Nicolas Scarron, children by his second marriage, all well and 
healthy, and rejoicing at the expense of others, appellants." Scarron, 
"CEuvres," vol. i, part 2, edit. 1737. This edition we shall always quote, 



378 corneille's contemporaries. 

old enough to perceive the designs of his mother- 
in-law, was neither sufficiently patient nor sufficiently 
skilful in his treatment of the weakness of his father, — 
" the best man in the world," he says, " but not the 
best father to his children by his first marriage/' 
Probably, Councillor Scarron was already disposed to 
feel displeased with his son, whose principal virtue 
was certainly not deference to opinions and tastes in 
which he did not coincide. " He has threatened a 
hundred times to disinherit his eldest son," says 
Scarron, " because he ventured to maintain that 
Malherbe wrote better verses than Ronsard ; and 
has predicted that he would never make his fortune, 
because he did not read his Bible, and tie up his 
breeches with points." ^ 

Subjects of more serious quarrels, which arose from 
young Scarron's dislike of his mother-in-law, and the 
equally great aversion which she felt for himself, 
compelled his father to banish him for some time 
from the paternal residence. He spent two years at 
Charleville with one of his relations. Either because 
the tedium of exile had led him to reflect a httle 
upon the necessity of patience, or because the age of 



except in extracts from tlie " Roman Comique." This Factum was printed 
on the occasion of a lawsuit which he had, after his father's death, with 
his half brothers and sisters, and to which we shall presently refer. 

^ The fashion of tying the breeches to the doublet with tagged points 
preceded that of wearing trunk hose, but old men long retained the habit. 
Harpagon, in Moliere's " Avare," was " trussed with points." Act ii. sc. 6, 



PAUL SCAREON. 379 

enjoyment had rendered him careless of business, 
Scarron, on his return to Paris, determined to allow 
his father to waste in peace the fortune of his children ; 
whilst, on his part, he plunged with equal tranquillity 
into all those pursuits which render the possession of 
fortune indispensable. At all events, it does not 
appear that new differences had necessitated a fresh 
separation, and forced the son to seek resources inde- 
pendently of his family. 

He had adopted the ecclesiastical profession, but 
without gaining the emoluments, or subjecting himself 
to the discipline, of his new calling. The garb which 
he wore was assumed merely as a means of saving him- 
self from the necessity of choosing another occupation 
less favourable to his tastes for idleness and dissipa- 
tion. These tastes led him wherever amusement was 
to be found, and he carried amusement whithersoever 
he went. His method of diverting others was to 
divert himself ; and he did not think that wit could be 
useful for any other purpose. I do not know whether 
his wit would have made his fortune at the Hotel 
de Rambouillet, for where Voiture reigned supreme, 
Scarron might well have found the society tedious ; 
but Ninon's parties, and all those societies in which 
a taste for pleasure combined with a taste for wit, and 
liberty of action was united to liberty of thought, 
were the societies which Scarron frequented; and it is 
by no means improbable that he frequented others in 



380 corneille's contemporaries. 

still less conformity to ecclesiastical regularity. A 
journey which he made to Rome, when about twenty- 
four years of age, does not appear to have been 
dictated by more serious motives, or to have produced 
more serious results, than those which ordinarily 
characterised his conduct. The recollections which 
remain to us, in his Works, of the time of his youth, 
tell us only of the pleasures which he regretted, and 
the natural gratifications with which they supplied 
him. " When I reflect," he writes to M. de Marigny, 
" that I was strong enough until twenty-seven years 
of age to drink frequently in the German fashion, and 
that, if Heaven had left me the legs that once danced 
so elegantly, and the hands that could paint and play 
the lute so well, I might still lead a very happy, 
though perhaps rather obscure, life — I swear to you, 
my dear friend, that, if it were lawful for me to 
terminate my own existence, I would have poisoned 
myself long ago.^^ ^ 

At length Scarron was afflicted with those maladies 
which were destined to gain him a celebrity which he 
had never anticipated, and to devote to the service of 
the public a gaiety of mind which a poor invalid could 
no longer always employ in his own service. We 
possess no positive information regarding the origin 
of the strange infirmities which seem to have fallen 

1 Scarron, " CEuvres," vol. i. part 2, pp. 83, 84. See also his Portrait of 
himself at p. 20 of the same volume ; and his " Epitre a Pelisson/' in 
vol. viii. p. 106. 



PAUL SCAERON. 381 

upon him suddenly, and made him a cripple for the 
remainder of his life. Scarron himself speaks of 
them as unknown to his physicians/ The following 
anecdote is related by La Beaumelle, and has been 
repeated by all the compilers of anecdotes : " He had 
gone to spend the carniyal at his canonicate of Mans. 
At Mans, as in most large provincial towns, the 
carnival ended by public masquerades which strongly 
resembled our fairs of Bezons. Abbe Scarron deter- 
mined to join the maskers ; but under what disguise 
should he conceal himself? He had at once to 
redeem the eccentricity of his character and the 
dignity of his position, to respect the Church and do 
honour to burlesque. He covered every part of his 
body with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, jumped 
into it, and rolled about until he was completely 
covered with feathers. In this costume he paraded 
through the fair, and attracted universal attention. 
The women soon surrounded him ; some ran away, 
but others plucked him of his plumes, and soon the 
fine masker looked more like a canon than an 
American Indian. At this sight, the people collected 

^ " Mai dangereiix puisqu'il est inconnu." 
The line stands thus, at least, in the Amsterdam edition. The edition of 
1737, which we generally follow, gives it thus, vol. viii. p. 54 : — 

" Mai dangereux puisqu'il est si connu." 

This last version is evidently erroneous, as well as contraiy to the sense of 
the two following lines on poverty : — 

" Et chose autant dangereuse tenue, 
Quoiqu'elle soit, mieux que mon mal, connue." 



38^ corneille's contemporaries. 

in crowds, and indignantly inveighed against so 
scandalous an exhibition. At last Scarron got clear 
of his persecutors, and fled, hotly pursued, dripping 
with honey and water, and almost dead with fatigue. 
When just at bay, he came to a bridge, jumped 
heroically over the parapet, and hid himself among 
the reeds on the banks of the river. Here his heat 
subsided, a chilling cold pervaded his system, and 
infused into his blood the seeds of the maladies which 
afterwards afflicted him.^' ^ 

A single word is sufficient to disprove the whole of 
this story. Scarron did not obtain the canonry of 
Mans until 1646 ; that is, until after he had been an 
invalid for eight years, for his malady commenced in 
1638.^ At the time when he took possession of his 
benefice, he had already lost the entire use of all his 
limbs.^ This benefice was the first and only prefer- 

1 "M^moires de Maintenon," vol. i. pp. 118, 119. I may liere observe, 
once for all, that I shall only correct La Beaumelle when I think it abso- 
lutely indispensable to do so. To attempt to point out and disprove all 
the absurd conjectures in which he has indulged, both in his Memoirs and 
in his collection of Letters, would be to involve myself in discussions as 
interminable as useless. 

2 The year of the birth of Louis XIV. In his '' Typhon," he says : — 

" Et par maudite maladie, 
Dont ma face est toute enlaidie, 
Je suis persdcutd des-lors 
Que du tres-adorable corps 
De notre Reine, que tant j'aime, 
Sortit Louis le quatorzieme." 

3 In his Epistle to Mile. d'Hautefort, he writes (vol. viii. p. 1G7) : — 

'* Cependant notre pauvre corps 
Devient pitoyablement tors ; 



PAUL SOARRON. 383 

ment that he ever received/ It is true that, in his 
youth, he had been at Mans on a visit to Mile, de 
Hautefort, whose estates were situated in the neigh- 
bourhood of that town ; but he speaks of this visit 
only as of a time of happiness,^ the remembrance of 
which was not attended by any unpleasant circum- 
stances. Finally, the only authority for the truth of 
this anecdote is La Beaumelle ; no allusion is made 
to it either in Scarron's numerous works, which are 
full of information regarding himself and his mis- 
fortunes, or in the particulars handed down to us 
respecting him by Menage and Segrais, his intimate 
friends, or in the works of La Marniere^ and 
Chauffepie,* his biographers, who have most diligently 
collected together all discoverable details relating to 
his hfe. Without going very far in search of singular 



Ma t^te a gauche trop s'incline, 

Ce qm rabat bien de ma mine : 

De plus sur ma poitrine chet 

Mon menton touche a mon brechet." 
The date of this Epistle, 1646, is proved by that of the taxe des aisis which 
is mentioned in it. 

^ In another Epistle to Mile. d'Hautefort during the early years of the 
widowhood of Anne of Austria (1643), we find these lines : — 
*' Mais j'en aurois 6i6 larron 

Si je jouissois d'abbaye. 

Car, helas ! en jour de ma vie 

On ne m'a jamais rien donnd, 

Quoique je sois ensoutan^." 
He had then been an invalid for five years. 

2 See the '' Ldgende de Bourbon," written in 1641, in vol. viii. p. 10 of 
his Works. 

3 See his Life of Scarron, at the beginning of his Works, edit. 1737. 

^ See the article on Scarron, in his " Dictionuaire historique et critique." 



384 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

adventures to account for Scarron's malady, a 
sufficient explanation will probably be found in the 
ordinary adventures to which he so carelessly exposed 
himself ^ 

But of whatever imprudent actions he might have 
been guilty, his punishment was cruelly severe. 
Irremediable pains successively seized upon all the 
members of his body ; and he became contorted and 
deformed in the strangest manner. He has left us 
the following description of his appearance, when 
between thirty and forty years old : — 

" My sight is tolerably good, though my eyes are 
large ; they are blue, and one is more deeply sunken 
than the other, on the side on which I bend my head. 
My nose is rather well formed. My teeth, formerly 
square pearls, are now of the colour of wood, and 
will soon be of the colour of slate ; I have lost one- 
and-a-half on the right side, and two-and-a-half on 
the left side, and two are not quite sound. My legs 
and thighs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards 
an equilateral angle, and, at length, an acute one. 
My thighs and body form another ; and my head, 
always dropping on my breast, makes me not ill 
represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as 
well as my legs ; and my fingers as well as my arms. 

" In support of this opinion, see an epigi'am by Gilles Boileau, in vol. i. 
part 2, p. 176 of Scarron's Works. It is only fair to say that this epigi'am, 
which is full of odious invectives, cannot be received as authoritative in the 
matter. 



PAUL SCAREON. 385 

In a word, I am an abridgment of human miseries/' * 
In another place, he tells us that he is unable to use 
his hands for any purpose whatever ; ^ and he fre- 
quently informs his correspondents that he is obliged 
to employ one of his servants to write his letters. ^ 
On one occasion, he was overwhelmed with grief at 
not having been able to see Mme. de Villarceaux, 
when she paid him a visit : — 

" Car elle ^toit k cote de sa chaise," •* 

and he could not turn his head round to look at her. 
As for walking, it was entirely out of the question ; ^ 
and he could hardly be seated in his padded chair 
without suffering excruciating pain.^ The slightest 

^ See the "Portrait de M. Scarron, fait par lui-meme, et adress^ au 
lecteur qui ne m'a jamais vu/' in vol. i., part 2, p. 20, of his Works. 

2 In a letter to the Countess de Fiesque (vol. viii. p. 123 of his Works) 
he complains that a fly once settled on his nose, and he was unable to 
drive it away because his servants had left the room. 
" Pour mes mains, vous le savez bien, 
Elles me servent moins que rien." 

He was at this time able to write with them, but several passages in his 
letters prove that he was frequently imable to use them at all. 
^ In his " Seconde Ldgende de Bourbon/' vol. viii. p. 15, he says : — 
" Mes mains, ou bien celles d'un autre. 
Car point n'en a I'esclave votre, 
Ou bien, s'il en pend k son bras, 
Le pauvret ne s'en aide pas." 

See also the " Epttre k Pelisson," vol. viii. p. 107. 

^ " Epitre k Mademoiselle de Lenville," vol. viii. p. 94. 

5 In the "Epitre k I'lnfante d'Escars," vol, viii. p. 100, he says :— 

" Et meme on dit, mais ce sont mddisans, 
Qu'on ne m'a vu marcher depuis ti-ois ans." 

6 In the "Seconde L^ende de Bourbon," vol. viii. p. 15, he says : — 

" Comment y trouver repos 
N'^tant assis que sur des os ? 

c c 



386 corneille's contempoeaeies. 

movement put him to torture ; ^ he was able to sleep 
only by the aid of opium ; ^ and his emaciation 
was so great, that his body hardly possessed the 
consistency of a skeleton. ^ 

Under these dreadful circumstances, Scarron still 
retained two sources of consolation, — his wit and his 
stomach. * But if courage be necessary to make use 
of wit, money is still more necessary to supply the 
wants of the stomach ; and poverty formed the 
climax of Scarron's misfortunes. Without a pro- 
fession, and utterly incapable of earning his own 
livelihood, Scarron had no resource but the fortune 
of his father, who was still alive ; and it would 
appear that his mother-in-law, whose interest it was 
to confirm him in his carelessness rather than to 



Mais ici je me glorifie, 

Homme sans c . . . ne sassit mie, 

Et moi pauvret je n'en ai point." 

^ " A single visit which he paid not long ago to the Chancellor gave him 
a great pain in the back, and caused him to say, * Helas ! ' more than two 
thousand times, besides exclaiming, ' Je renie ma vie ! ' and ' Maudit soit le 
proces / ' more than two hundred times apiece." See the " Factum." 
2 " Tant I'opium m'a hebete, 
Dont j'use I'hiver et I'ete, 
Afin que dessus ma carcasse 
Le sommeil parfois sejour fasse." 

3 See the " Vers adresses a Scarron sur son Virgile Travesti," vol. iv. 
p. 73 :— 

** Toi qui chantas jadis Typhon, 
Chetif de corps, d'dme sublime, 
Toi qui peses moins qu'un chiffon." 

^ " The interior of my body is still so good that I drink all sorts of 
liquors, and eat all sorts of viands, with as little reserve as the greatest 
glutton." — "Letter to M, de Marigny," vol, i., part 2, p. 84, 



PAUL SCAREON. 387 

arouse him to effort, had always allowed his wants to 
be supplied in such a manner that he should have no 
cause for complaint. But external circumstances 
occurred to aggravate and disclose the disordered 
state of his affairs. Richelieu, who was deeply 
incensed against the Parhament for the opposition 
which it continually offered to his measures, revenged 
himself upon it from time to time by strokes of 
authority which awed it into temporary submission. 
On every manifestation of resistance, two or three 
councillors were banished ; and their recall was 
made to depend upon the obedience of their colleagues. 
On one of these occasions, Scarron's father, animated, 
as it would appear, by the example and eloquence of 
the President Barillon, and the Councillors Salo and 
Bitaux, ^ displayed so much zeal and vigour, that the 
public bestowed upon him the nickname of " the 
apostle."^ He was banished, with those of his col- 
leagues whose views he had maintained ; and shortly 
afterwards, in 1641, the king having declared that 
" he alone had the right to dispose of all the offices 
of the Parliament," ^ they were deprived of their 
emoluments, and continued in their banishment. 

^ In his " Requete au Cardinal de Richelieu," vol. viii. p. 54, he thus 
inveighs against these gentlemen : — 

" Barillon, Salo I'aine, Bitaux, 
Votre parler nous cause de grands maux." 

2 See various letters, in Scarron's Works, vol. i., part 1, p. 169, and 
vol. viii. pp. 53, 86, 90. ^ '<M^zerai," vol. xii. p. 145. 

c c 2 



388 CORNEILLE's CONTEMPOEARIES. 

This event completed the derangement of Coun- 
cillor Scarron's afiairs ; ^ and his wife, who remained 
at Paris, did not settle them to the advantage of 
her step-children, or indeed of her own sons and 
daughters. Avidity is a snare in which avarice is 
frequently caught. If we are to believe Scarron's 
stories about his mother-in-law, her fondness for 
gambling, and the losses which she experienced 
through having " lent out her money at exorbitant 
interest,'' did more than absorb the profits derived 
from her parsimonious house-keeping, which she 
carried so far as to " make the holes of her sugar- 
castor very small,'' that the sugar might pour out in 
less abundance. Scarron, who was busied in efforts 
to obtain the recall and restoration of his father, 
encouraged by a slight expression of the Cardinal's 
approval of the burlesque requisition which he had 
presented to him on the subject,^ was beginning 

^ See the " Requete au Cardinal de Riclielieu," vol. viii. p. 54 : — 
" Quatre ou cinq fois maudit soit la harangue 
Que langue fit, et dont punie est langue, 
Car je crois bien que depuis ce temps-Ik 
Fort peu de quoi mettre sur langue il a." 

2 The requisition ended with these lines : — 

" Fait k Paris, ce dernier jour d'Octobre, 
Par moi, Scarron, qui malgrd moi suis sobre, 
L'an que Ton prit le fameux Perpignan, 
Et sans canon la ville de Sedan." 

The Cardinal observed that the letter was dated pleasantly. Scarron, who 
was immediately informed of this saying, was led by it to entertain the 
highest hopes, and hastened to thank the Cardinal in an ode which is not 
sufl&ciently burlesque to cover its attempts at pomposity. He was so much 



PAUL SCARROK 389 

to entertain some hope of success, when RicheHeu 
died, at the end of 1642. Councillor Scarron himself 
died, it appears, in 1643, while still in disgrace and 
exile at Loches ; and Paul Scarron and his two sisters 
inherited, not the remnant of his father's fortune, but 
the lawsuits brought against them, to deprive them 
of it, by their mother-in-law, " Fran^oise de Plaix, 
the most htigating woman in the world ;" and these 
lawsuits were continued for several years after her 
death, by the three children born of her marriage 
with the Councillor. 

Against this accumulation of evils, Scarron had 
to contend with a body that was scarcely alive, an 
acute, frivolous, and impetuous mind, and a soul 
which had undergone no preparation for misfortune. 
Scarron, therefore, felt no desire to maintain this 
unequal conflict, and exerted all his talents to escape 
from it. A complete child, as regarded the change- 
fulness and vivacity of his impressions, he yielded 
unresistingly to pain when it became strong enough 
to overcome him ; and as soon as it allowed him a 
little relaxation, he abandoned himself with equal 
thoroughness to the impulses of his gaiety and 
wit. In the excess of his misfortunes, or even in 
the simplest disappointments of life, he declined re- 
course to none of the consolations of weakness. He 

flattered by this compliment that, long after the Cardinal's death, he 
alludes to it in several parts of his works. Among others, see the " Epitre 
K Mile. d'Hautefort," vol. viii. p. 166. 



390 corneillb's contemporaries. 

indulged in tears ^ as well as in the most violent 
expressions of very harmless anger ; ^ and when his 
sufferings became less intense, he laughingly ended 
by forgetting them. At such times, he could com- 
plain without falling into despondency, and frequently 
amused himself by the vivacity of his complaints, 
and the originality of the shapes assumed in his mind 
by the idea of his sufferings. " He was agreeable 
and diverting in all things," says Segrais, " even in 
his ill-humour and his anger, because the burlesque 
side of everything invariably presented itself to his 
mind, and he immediately expressed in words all that 

1 His singular propensity to weeping is noticed in several passages of his 
Worts. He terminates a jocular letter to Mme. Tambonneau, because his 
agony tortures him, he says : — 

'' Et le fait pleurer comme un veau." 

Nothing so violent as an attack of rheumatism, however, was necessary to 
call forth his tears ; they were ready to flow, even when he was embar- 
rassed by the interchange of compliments. " When I receive, or am obliged 
to pay compliments," he says in a letter to M. de Vivonne, "I begin to 
cry, and get rid of them in the most pitiable manner in the world ; " and 
he again mentions this peculiarity in a letter to the Marechal d'Albret. In 
the " Seconde Legende de Bourbon," he thus describes an adventure with 
a footman, who attempted to prevent him from entering a ball-room : — 
*' Un jour que j'entrois dans un bal. 

Sans que je lui fisse aucun mal, 

Sa main voulut ma gorge prendre, 

Et la prit sans vouloir la rendre, 

Comme si ma gorge eut ete 

Un bien dont il eut herite ; 

Enfin il ressentit les charmes 

De deux yeux qui versent des larmes ; 

Le coeur de caillou devint chair 

Pe cet impitoyable archer, 

Et j'entrai dedans I'assemblee, 

Essuyant ma face mouillee." 
- " All that I do under this new misfortune," lie writes to M. de Marigny, 



PAUL SCAREON. 391 

his imagination pourtrayed to him/' ^ That openness 
of soul, the readiness of his wit to display its powers, 
and that playfulness of imagination and humour, 
which led Scarron so rapidly from idea to idea, and 
from sentiment to sentiment, rendered society the 
chief element of his existence, and made him the 
life and soul of every society that he frequented. 
" I call my valet a fooV^ he tells us, in his description 
of himself, " and an instant afterwards I call him 
' sir/ " Among his friends, passing continually from 
fits of the most amusing indignation to outbursts 
of the gayest buffoonery, full of animation on 
every subject, set in motion by a single word, 
ever disposed to dispute but never to bitterness 
of feeling, prone to maliciousness but devoid of 
malignity, good-natured in disposition,^ and most 



in reference to an attack of gout, " and in the furious state of grief in wliich 
I am plunged by my bad fortune, is that I swear, without boasting, as well 
as any man in France. I am sometimes so furious that if all the devils 
would come to carry me off, I think I should go half the way with them." 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 159. 

2 An anecdote related by Segrais would seem, however, to prove that he 
could not always take a joke ; but the trick which was played him was a 
cruel one to a man in Scarron's condition. One of his friends, named 
Madaillan, " wrote to him under the name of a young lady, pretending 
that she was charmed with his wit, and that she desired nothing more 
than to see him, but she could not make up her mind to call upon him. 
After the interchange of several letters, the pretended lady made an 
appointment to meet him somewhere in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
Scarron, who then lived in the Marais, did not fail to go to the place of 
assignation ; but he found no one. No sooner had he arrived at home 
than he received a letter, in which the pretended lady made her excuses that 
an unforeseen obstacle had prevented her from keeping her word. Two 
or three other appointments were made with no better success. At length. 



392 COKNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

ingenuous in his self-consciousness, ^ Scarron was 
one of those amiable creatures to whom we become 
attached because they please us, whom we forgive 
everything because we should never have the courage 
to find fault with them, whom we love to see happy 
because we share in their happiness, and whose 
misfortunes interest us all the more because they 
never appear to us under too painful an aspect. 
When Scarron was no longer able to visit his friends, 
his friends came to see him : friendship and taste 
brought his first visitors ; curiosity and fashion 
brought a still larger number ; and his house became 
one of the chief rendezvous of that joyous, witty, 
and frivolous crowd, who found sufiicient pleasure 
in change of occupation, and whose love of amuse- 
ment was so great that, in their eyes, the power to 
amuse became almost a title to respect. 

Never did an invalid lead a more animated life ; 
but the invalid was poor, and the pleasures which 

having discovered Madaillan's trick, he never spoke of his conduct without 
anger." — " Segraisiana," p. 155. It was for this ** unknown lady" that 
Scarron wrote the hues contained in vol. viii. p. 170 of his Works. 

1 His self-consciousness as an author was concealed just as little by 
him as his other quahties. " When you paid him a visit," says Segrais, 
"you had first to endure the perusal of all he had written since you 
last saw him." — " Segraisiana," p. 158. He called this "trying on his 
works." This mania in Scarron had the good eflfect of correcting another 
author of the same bad habit. " I perceived," says Segrais, " that I was 
bored to death when Scarron, who was my particular friend, and who 

concealed nothing from me, opened his portfolio, and read me his verses." 

" Segraisiana," pp. 12, 13. From this time forth Segrais thought it would 
not be right to read his own poems to any one, unless he were requested 
to do so. 



PAUL SCARRON. 393 

health procures are the only ones that cost nothing- 
To a taste for neatness and elegance, ^ which was the 
necessary result of his habits, Scarron united the 
keenest rehsh for the only enjoyments which still 
remained within his reach. He had retained, as he 
says, a good stomach, and was somewhat of a 
gourmand. His goiirmandise, like all his movements, 
was communicative, and Scarron would never have 
consented to take a dull meal. His table was almost 
always surrounded by friends of good humour and 
good appetite. It is true that the freedom of 
familiarity had banished from these repasts all 
affectation, ceremony, and entremets — a sort of 
luxury then reserved for the wealthy alone. ^ Every 

^ " Although Scarron was not rich, he was nevertheless lodged very com- 
fortably, and had a furniture of yellow damask, which, with its accompani- 
ments, might well be worth five or six thousand livres." " Segraisiana," 
pp. 127, 128. " Scarron was very neat in his dress and furniture." 
Ibid. p. 186. 

2 " A veiy rich man may eat entremets, paint his ceilings and alcoves, 
enjoy a palace in the country and another in town, keep a handsome 
equipage, introduce a duke into his family, and make his son a lord." La 
Bruyere, " Caracteres," vol. i. p. 229. Several passages in Scarron's own 
works confirm this peculiarity in the habits of his time. See the " Epitre 
a Guillemette," vol. i., part 2, p. 26 ; and the " Epitre a la Reine," vol. viii 
p. 150. An invitation to Mignard (vol. viiL p. 438), while it gives us a 
tolerably exact idea of our poet's ordinary entertainments, informs us that 
he did not carry luxury so far as entremets : — 

" Dimanche, Mignart, si tu veux, 

Nous mangerons un bon potage, 

Suivi d'un ragoiit ou de deux, 

De roti, dessert, et fromage. 

Nous boirons d'un vin excellent, 

Et contre le froid violent 

Nous aurons gi-and feu dans ma chambre ; 

Nous aurons des vins de liqueur, 

Des compotes avcc de I'ambre, 

Et je serai de bonne humeur." 



394 CORNEILLE S CONTEMPORARIES. 

guest was well received who contributed a dish to the 
entertainment/ and many of his friends who were 
not present took pleasure in thus ministering to his 
enjoyment ; ^ but these presents served rather to 
increase the number of his guests than to diminish 
his expenditure. His two sisters, who had been as 
badly treated as himself in the distribution of their 
father's property, ^ had come to add to the joyous 
disorder of his affairs, and to augment, it is said, the 
number of visitors to the house. * 

1 " D'Elbene and I," writes Scarron to M. de Vivonne, " are excellently 
well pleased with our jpetits soupers of contributed dishes," He says, in 
another place, that this M. d'Elbene came every day to share his supper 
with him. He was one of Scarron's greatest cronies, and appears to have been 
placed in a very similar position. He was so overwhelmed with debt that 
he did not venture to leave his residence in the Luxembourg in the daytime ; 
but he cared very little about this confinement. One of his creditors, 
meeting him one day walking in the garden with Menage and Segrais, pulled 
him by the coat and inquired, " Sir, do you think I shall ever be paid 1 " 
M. d'Elbene said, in a most obliging tone of voice, " Sir, I will think about 
it ; " and continued his walk without bestowing a thought on the subject. 
After he had taken two or three turns up and down, the creditor, thinking 
he had had time enough for reflection, stopped him again. M. d'Elbene 
turned round, recognised him, and said very quietly, " Sir, I think not." 
The creditor, with equal quietness, made his bow and went off. Madame 
d'Elbene was in the same predicament as her husband. When they married 
they had nearly eighty lawsuits between them. '' Segraisiana," pp. 66-68. 

2 His letters to Mile. d'Hautefort, Mile. d'Escars, the Marechal d'Albret, 
and other friends, are filled with thanks for presents of this kind. 

2 In his " Factum," he demands " if it is reasonable that the children of 
his father's second marriage should have coursing dogs and carriages, 
whilst Paul Scarron, who has no other property than his lawsuit, is over 
head and ears in debt, and has tired out all his friends ; Anne Scarron 
walks the streets on foot, with her head bent forward, and muddy up to 
her knees, a style of walking wKich she has inherited from her father ; and 
Frances Scarron, who is neater and more delicate, is too poor to ride in a 
chair, and spoils a vast quantity of pretty shoes." 

4 He used to say of his two sisters that " one was fond of wine, and the 
other of men." He used also to say that, in the Rue des Douze Portes, in 



PAUL SCARRON. 395 

What resources had Scarron to maintain such a 
mode of life 1 The first and surest means was to incur 
debts, which never troubled him until the time came 
for paying them ; but this always arrived so quickly, 
that he was constantly obliged to devise other means 
of subsistence. Then, he did not spare his solicita- 
tions, nor were his Court friends deficient in promises. 
As he was an Abbe, or at least wore a cassock, the 
most natural method of assisting him would have been 
to give him a benefice ; but to what benefice was it 
possible to appoint so unclerical an Abbe ? He 

which he resided, there were " a dozen prostitutes, counting his two sisters 
only as one." One of them, Frances, was veiy pretty, and had the Duke 
de Tremes for her lover. She was kept by him, it appears, for a considei'- 
able time, and bore him a son, whom Scarron used to call his nephew. 
When asked how he came by this nephew, he replied that he was a nephew 
a la mode du Marais. See the " Segraisiana," pp, 88, 157. Segrais tells us, 
somewhere, that Scarron's sisters were not married. But then, why does 
he call Anne Scarron a " poor widow," in his " Factum ? " And if she was 
a widow, why does he speak of her by her maiden name? In the same 
document, he says that Finances Scarron was " ill paid by her lodger." It 
does not appear that any of Councillor Scarron's elder children had any 
houses to let. Was the Duke de Tremes this lodger? This is not 
incredible when we consider the times in which Scarron lived. He after- 
wards quarrelled with one or both of his sisters. Among his Works we 
find a dedicatory epistle addressed to the " tres-honnete et tres-dkertissante 
ckienne, dame Gidllemette, petite levrette de ma sceur." Menage declares that, 
at the time of this quarrel, Scarron reprinted his works, with this erraticm, 
instead of " ehienne de ma sceur," read " ma chienne de sceit/)'." " Menagiana," 
vol. iii. p. QQ. This was probably one of Scarron's jokes tm-ned into a fact 
by Menage ; and a reference to the title is sufficient to prove that such an 
erraticm could not have been made. Nothing, moreover, is more open to 
doubt than what has been written about Scarron, I do not here refer to 
La Beaumelle alone, but to the statements of Segi-ais and Menage, his inti- 
mate friends ; even the documents based upon his works and the most 
authentic facts of the time, are everywhere full of the most unaccountable 
contradictions. Some of these I shall point out ; but many more must be 
passed over in silence. 



396 corneille's contemporaries. 

therefore applied for a very simple one — " so simple/^ 
he said, " that it was only necessary to believe in 
God to fulfil its duties." ^ But even of this he was as 
yet scarcely deemed capable. 

At length Mile. d'Hautefort, the firm friend of his 
youth, who had returned to Court after the death of 
Louis XIIL, ^ and was held in high favour by the 
Queen, inspired Her Majesty with a desire to see so 
fashionable an invalid. Scarron was carried to the 
Louvre " in his grey chair ; " and, after the first few 
moments of awkwardness, from which not even the 
vivacity of his wit could deliver him, and which was 
augmented by the consciousness of his strange 
appearance, he regained his senses and originality, 
and requested the Queen's permission to serve her in 
the capacity of her invalid. The Queen smiled ; and 
this was Scarron's appointment. He hoped by means 
of his title to obtain a lodging in the Louvre ; and 
urged his request in several pieces of verse, in which 
he informs Her Majesty that " her invalid fulfils — 

" Sa charge avec int^grite." ^ 

But this favour was not granted him. He received 
a gratuity of five hundred crowns, * which was 

^ " M^nagiana/' vol. iii. p. 154. 

2 Louis XIII., who was once in love with her, had afterwards banished 
her. 

3 " Stances k la Reine," vol. viii. p. 304. 

* According to the " Epltre k GuiU'emette/' it was M. de Schomberg 
who obtained this gratuity for hitn. This gentleman, who subsequently 
married Mile. d'Hautefort, seems to have shared in her partiality for Scarron. 



PAUL SCARRON. 397 

afterwards changed into a pension. ^ But in vain, 
to render his pension certain, did he request that it 
might be settled upon some benefice ; in vain, to 
obtain his demand, did he employ every tone, 
including even that of penitence, confessing that in 
his youth he had been — 

" Un vrai yaisseau d'iniquit^," 

or, to speak more naturally, and in his ordinary 
manner, — 

" Un tres-mauvais petit vilain ; " ^ 

in vain did he promise cheerfully to endure his 
sufferings for the love of God ; devotion could not 
possibly be numbered among his means of obtaining 
a fortune. His best resource, the friendship of 
Mile. d'Hautefort, at length obtained for him from 
M. de Lavardin, the Bishop of Mans, the little 
canonry in which he was installed in 1646. 

To these means of subsistence, Scarron did not 
neglect to add the resources derived from a more 
abundant than laborious use of his pen. It does 
not appear that the idea of writing for publication 

^ It was the Commander de Souvre, according to the " Epitre h, Guille- 
mette," who obtained the conversion of the gi-atuity into a pension. 
ScaiTon's different biographers suppose that this pension was granted in 
1643. We are inclined to believe it was not granted until 1645. The 
matter will be placed beyond dispute if, as is asserted, it was granted by 
the protection of Cardinal Mazarin, to whom Scarron had appealed in a 
poem entitled " L'Estocade." Now, this poem necessarily belongs to 1645, 
as Scarron mentions in it that he had been ill for seven years. See 
vol, viii. p. 71 of his Works. Many other reasons might be adduced in 
support of this opinion, if it were worth discussion. 

2 " Epitre h- la Reine," vol. viii. p. 149. 



398 COENEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

ever occurred to him during his younger days, when 
he thought he could employ his time to better 
advantage ; and, with the exception of a few songs 
to Iris and Chloris, which are all above mediocrity, 
we possess no poem of his composition which does 
not belong to the time of his sufferings. " There is 
nothing," says the Abbe de Choisi, " which loosens 
the tongue so effectually as gout in the feet and 
hands ; ^^ ^ and during the few solitary hours in which 
his tongue was compelled to remain idle, Scarron 
committed to paper, in rhymes which were less 
piquant than his conversation, whatever he had been 
unable to utter verbally. These writings were 
originally intended only for the amusement of a 
select circle ; and some excessively familiar letters, 
a few occasional pieces, dashed off under the inspira- 
tion of the moment, as fast as his pen could write ; ^ 

1 Choisi, " M^moires," pp. 45, 46. 
2 See the " Epltre a I'Abb^ d'Espagny," vol. vlii. p. 175 : — 
" Foin ! rime sur rime m' engage 
A griffonner plus d'une page, 
Et ce n'etoit pas mon dessein 
De griffonner plus d'un dixain, 
Ou d'un douzain, que je ne mente ; 
Mais toujours la somme s'augmente, 
Eb j'ecrirois jusqu'k demain 
Si je ne retirois ma main." 
It was thus that Scarron wrote verses. At one time he ends his letter 
because " he is going to bed ; " and at another, because " it is late, and he is 
going to sup." He dates one letter from his chair in the chimney-corner — 
^' Entre un epagneul et ma chatte, 
Qui vient de lui donner la patte." 
He avails himself of every circumstance ; nothing comes amiss to him. It 
seems sometimes as if he had the privilege of saying in verse what was not 
worth saying in prose. 



PAUL SCAEROI?. o99 

verses distinguished only by arbitrary rhymes from 
irregular prose, a natural gaiety which nothing could 
trammel or regulate, a sort of childishness which 
occasionally possessed the merit of simplicity, and 
a prattle which was often witty enough to conceal 
its frequently insignificant character, — were the 
first foundations of Scarron's literary renown ; and 
these credentials were more than sufficient to 
estabhsh his reputation, even among men of letters. 
Segrais speaks of Scarron's verses as "very good ;" ^ 
and the following hues from his little poem of " Hero '' 
were greatly admfred : — 

" Avec Temail de nos prairies, 
Quand on sait bien le fagonner. 
On pent aussi bien couronner 
Qu'avec Tor et les pieiTeries." 

" These hues,'' says Menage, " are worth all the gold 
and jewels to which they allude." ^ The persons to 
whom Scarron addressed his effusions hastened to 
make them public, and this publicity led others to 
desire the honour of having something of the kind 
to show. The Count (afterwards Duke) de Saint- 
Aignan, who is mentioned in the " Legende de 
Bourbon," acknowledged the honour in a poetical 
epistle, in which he assured the " divine Scarron " 
that he had read the passage in which his name was 
mentioned " upon his knees." ^ A work of greater 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 12. - " M^nagiana," vol. ii. p. 324. 

-' Scarron, " Q^uvres," vol. viii. p. 117. 



400 corneille's contemporaries. 

pretensions, the " Typhon/' a poem in three cantos, 
appeared worthy of the attention of a less Hmited 
pubHc, and Scarron had it printed in 1644. Its 
success fully equalled his expectations ; and the 
" Typhon,'^ though now unknown even in the 
provinces, to which Boileau banished its admirers, ^ 
was then considered as the type of that style of 
composition of which Scarron was regarded as the 
model. Henceforward he might reckon among his 
surest sources of revenue the income derived from 
his Marquisate of Quinette, a nickname which he had 
bestowed on the profits arising from the sale of his 
works, from the name of the publisher to whom he 
sold them. He diligently cultivated this fertile 
domain ; and the collection of his early poems, 
printed in 1645, and two series of tales imitated from 
the Spanish, ^ maintained that reputation which was 
beginning to be of real service to him. Our stage, 
which was then open to all comers, also presented a 
fruitful source of income to a man who could compose 



1 " Mais de ce genre enfin la cour d^sabusde 
D^daigna de ces vers I'extravagance ais^e, 
Distingua le naif du plat et du bouffon 
Et laissa la province admirer le Typhon" 

Boileau, " Art Poetique," lines 91 — 94. 
\ One of these tales, " La Precaution inutile/' furnished Moliere with 
the idea of the " Ecole des Femmes/' and Sedaine with the subject of " La 
Gageure." In the " Hypocrites," we find the substance of one of the 
principal scenes of " Tartuffe." Did Moliere borrow from Scarron, or from 
the Spanish author to whom Scarron himself was indebted 1 This question 
is not of sufficient interest to justify the researches which would be 
required for its solution. 



i 



PAUL SCARRON. 401 

a comedy in three weeks ; and the Spanish drama 
furnished him with inexhaustible subjects, which it 
cost him httle trouble to remodel. There was no 
obstacle in the taste of the age to the success of those 
romantic intrigues which formed the substance of such 
pieces, or of those extravagant buj5boneries which 
constituted their principal ornament ; and Scarron 
had no pretensions to reform the public taste. At 
length, in 1646, a journey to Mans, where a troop of 
comedians were then performing, gave him the idea 
of his " Roman Comique," " the only one of his works 
which will go down to posterity," says Menage ; ^ and 
in 1648 appeared the first book of his " Virgile 
Travesti," the name and some passages of which 
have at least behed Menage's statement, and the 
prodigious success of which assured the triumph of 
burlesque. 

But of all the Hterary labours in which Scarron 
was engaged, dedications were the most lucrative ; 
and he was not sparing of them. " No one," says 
Segrais, " has written more dedications than he has ; 
but he dedicated in order to obtain money. M. de 
Bellievre sent him a hundred pistoles for a dedication 
which he had addressed to him, and I took him fifty 
from Mademoiselle, for a wicked comedy which he 
had dedicated to her."^ Princes, nobles, and even 

^ " M^nagiaua," vol. iii. p. 291. 
-' The " Ecoliei' de Salamanque," " Segraisiana," p. 97. 



402 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

private persons, took pleasure in deserving, by their 
liberality, the place assigned to them by Scarron in 
his works. All, however, did not attach the same 
price to the compliment ; and Scarron complained 
particularly of the French princes : — 

" Nos princes sont beaux et courtois, 
Doux en faits ainsi qu'en paroles ; 
Mais au diable si deux pistoles, 
F<it-on devant eux aux abois, 
Sortirent jamais de leurs doigts, 
Arb.tl^tes h, croquignoles ; 
Et I'autetir enrag^, qui leur fait un sonnet, 
N'en tire qu'un covip de bonnet," ' 

Mazarin was not more liberal than the princes. 
Scarron had dedicated his " Typhon '' to him ; but 
the prime minister had not inherited from his pre- 
decessor that taste for literature which, in a person of 
high rank, is ever akin to the love of glory. Mazarin, 
however, was either insensible to homage of this 
kind, or else he thought it amply recompensed by 
the pension which, according to all appearance, he 
had just obtained for Scarron. He therefore received 
the dedication as a mark of gratitude which was due 
to him, and with the cold kindness of a protector 
who thought the poet had no right to ask any 
further favours. Wounded in his self-love, as well 
as deceived in his hopes, Scarron, unfortunately, did 
not consider himself as under sufficient obligation to 
a man from whom he had nothing more to expect ; 

1 See the " Ode au Prince d'Orange," vol. viii. p. 273. 



PAUL SCAREOX. 408 

and, though compelled to leave, in his '' Typhon," 
the invocation which formed a part of the work 
itself, and the suppression of which would have been 
too open an insult, he nevertheless suppressed the 
sonnet containing the dedication, and supplied its 
place by another, which was probably not printed 
at that period, but which occurs in all the later 
editions of his works. Even if Mazarin had been 
aware of this, neither the offence nor the offender 
then appeared worthy of his resentment ; but Scarron 
soon found means for making himself more re- 
markable. 

He was at the height of his burlesque reputation 
when the troubles of the Fronde broke out. A man 
who held a pension from the queen, with which he 
could not dispense, naturally hesitated before declar- 
ing against the minister ; and therefore Scarron, 
notwithstanding his ill-will, was at first a Mazarin. 
But the difficulties of the Court probably suspended 
the payment of his pension ; and the author of 
" Typhon " then gave full vent to his feelings of 
dishke. When cries of public indignation were 
raised against the Mazarin, he laughingly added, 
" I dedicated my ' Typhon ' to him, but he did not 
condescend to look at it." To this motive for re- 
venge were doubtless added a multitude of others 
calculated to arouse the patriotism of such a man as 
Scarron. The Fronde was the party of all good 

D D 2 



404 oorneille's contemporaries. 

company ; and the laughers, as usual, were in 
opposition to authority. Scarron naturally ranged 
himself on the gayest side ; and, surrounded as he 
was by friends of the coadjutor or partisans of the 
Prince, he was not the man to hold out long for 
a party which was regarded as thoroughly ridiculous 
in all those societies which constituted the amuse- 
ment and occupation of his life. He therefore became 
a Frondeur ; the " Mazarinade " was the fruit of 
his conversion, and gained him enough honour among 
his own party to counterbalance the injury it inflicted 
on his fortune with the Court party, and doubtless 
also on his reputation in the judgment of reasonable 
people. The Cardinal, who cared little for ridicule 
after he had braved hatred, carefully perused, and 
formed an impartial opinion, it is said, of the literary 
merit of the poetical lampoons with which his enemies 
inundated Paris and the provinces. Had he read 
the " Mazarinade " only as a man of taste, we might 
forgive him the anger with which he was filled by 
this revolting tissue of coarse and obscene insults, 
devoid alike of wit and gaiety. But, more than 
this, the blows thus brutally struck had touched him 
on a sensitive point. In the splendour of his brilhant 
fortune, Mazarin remembered with pain the humilia- 
tions he had endured in consequence of the lowly 
amours of his youth, which were thought all the more 
ridiculous because his intentions had been perfectly 



PAUL SCAREON. 405 

serious.^ Though he hstened quietly to all the in- 
famous acts with which he was charged by the new 
libel that had been brought under his notice, he 
lost patience, it is said, at this passage, which re- 
minded him of his youthful follies : — 

" L'amour de certaine fruitiere 

Te causa maint coups d'etriviere, 

Quand le Cardinal Colonna 

De paroles te malmena, 

Et qu'k feeau pied comme un bncoue 

Tu te sauvas de Barcelone. 
* * * 

Ton incroyable destinee, 
Par ce tres-sortable hymenee 
De toi, prince des maquignons, 
Avec la vendeuse d'oignons, 
Eut ete vouee en Espagne 
A revendre quelque chatagne."" 

Although Scarron may for a moment have enjoyed 
his triumph, he soon felt that such pleasures always 
cost more than they are worth ; and the brief period 
of glory which he gained by this slight victory over 
the common enemy did not recompense him for the 
loss of his pension, which, from that time forth, 
ceased to be paid, and he was never able to obtain 
its restoration. Peace was made : the powerful men 
who had disturbed public tranquillity obtained either 
pardon or new favours ; even their rebellion, the 
dangers it had occasioned, and the fears it had 
inspired, were titles which they did not even find it 

' His love for a fruit-girl of Alcala, whom he wished to marry ; which, 
caused his dismissal by Cardinal Colonna, his first protector. 
- Scarron, " Mazarinade," vol. ix. pp. 6, 7. 



406 CORNEILLE's COI^TEMPOR ARIES. 

necessary to adduce in support of their claims to the 
consideration of the still frightened Court. But what 
hopes could be entertained by a man who had been 
imprudent enough to wound without possessing any 
means of making himself feared ? In vain did 
Scarron repent and pray, even confessing his fault, 
and beseeching its remission — 

•* Par le malheur des temps, et surtout pour le mien, 
J'ai dout^ d'un m^rite aussi pur que le sien ; " 

he says in a sonnet in praise of the Cardinal, " for- 
merly the object of his unjust satire.^' It was, 
indeed, a small matter, after the " Mazarinade," 
simply to confess that he had entertained doubts 
regarding " so pure a merit f but, after having lost 
his pension, it was a great deal too much to praise 
the Cardinal " for not having deemed him worthy of 
his anger." ^ Scarron offended like a child in a 
capricious mood ; when the caprice was passed, he 
begged pardon like a child. His friends probably 
did not blame him for his change of tone, but the 
Court did not consider it a merit ; it forgot his faults 
only by forgetting the culprit, and its indifference was 
the only thing for which Scarron had to thank it. 
The author of the " Mazarinade '' continued, never- 

1 Scarron, "OEuvres," vol. iii. p. 418. He adds : — 

" Je confesse un pdch^ que j'aurois pu celer, 
Mais le laissant douteux, je croirois lui voler 
La plus gi-aade action qu'il ait jamais pu faire." 

The force of abnegation could surely be carried no further. 



PAUL SCARRON. 407 

theless, to enjoy most brilliant popularity, ^Yllicll 
extended through all classes of society. We learn that 
a clerk in Fouquet's office refused to render Scarron 
a service because he had never " dedicated or given 
any of his books to him/' — a piece of politeness 
which had gained him the protection of another of the 
clerks ; and, in the letter in which Scarron relates 
this circumstance, he can boast at the same time 
that " queens,^ princesses, and all the persons of 
condition in the kingdom, do him the honour to visit 
him/^ ^ The Court had not yet extended its influence 
over the opinions and tastes of those who were not 
attached to it by personal, and so to speak, domestic 
service ; to have displeased the Court was not a 
reason for leaving it, even to those who were in most 
habitual intercourse with it ; and a pension of six- 
teen hundred livres, bestowed on Scarron by Fouquet, 
the superintendent of the finances and the favourite 
of the Cardinal, soon supplied the place of that 
which had been refused him by the queen. 

It was, however, during the period of distress 
which followed the suppression of his first pension, 
that a new guest sought an asylum in the house of 
Scarron, and was received with his ordinary cor- 
diality. The choice was singular ; this guest was a 
nun. A lady whom he had loved in his youth, 

^ The Queen of Sweden. 
" Scarron, "CEuvres,'" vol. i, part 2, p. 133. 



408 corneillf/s contemporaries. 

Celeste de Palaiseau, though insensible to his pro- 
testations of afTection, had afterwards yielded to the 
entreaties of a wealthy gentleman who had promised 
to marry her, but who, finding himself rich enough 
to dispense with the performance of his promise, had 
redeemed himself from his engagement by the pay- 
ment of forty thousand francs. With this sum, 
Mile, de Palaiseau had retired to the Convent of the 
Conception, which had just been established at Paris ; 
but the expenses of the convent proving greater than 
the funds which it possessed, reduced the nuns to 
bankruptcy, and obliged them to abandon their house 
to their creditors, and to seek refuge, in couples, 
wherever they could. In the position in which 
Scarron was placed, Mile, de Palaiseau thought she 
might appeal to his generosity without causing 
scandal or fearing a refusal ; and she therefore 
reminded him of their former affection. Scarron 
received her into his house with her companion, and 
afterwards obtained for her the priory of Argenteuil. 
But Scarron, though wretched enough to inspire 
such confidence, nevertheless contemplated matri- 
mony, and had been inspired with this idea by a 
young and pretty girl. Whatever uncertainty may 
prevail with regard to the adventures which led to 
the marriage of Constant d'Aubigne, the father of 
Mile. d'Aubigne, and which afterwards drove his 
family from Europe to America, and from America 



PAUL SCAERON. 409 

to Europe, it is at least certain that his family were 
always under the pressure of misfortune, so as to be 
at length reduced to the lowest degree of misery, 
lender these circumstances, Scarron became acquainted 
with Mile. d'Aubigne. It is not known how they 
were first brought together. Segrais seems to ascribe 
their acquaintance to a project which Scarron had 
long entertained. The example of a Commandeur de 
Poincy, who had been cured of the gout by a voyage 
to Martinique, had awakened within hini a strong- 
desire to try the chmate of America for his own 
complaint. " My dog of a destiny," he writes to 
Sarrasin, in a letter the date of which cannot now be 
ascertained, " will take me within a month to the 
West Indies. I have invested a thousand crowns in 
the new Indian Company, which proposes to found a 
colony at the distance of three degrees from the 
Line, on the banks of the Orillana and Orinoco.^ 
Farewell France ! farewell Paris ! farewell ye 
tigresses disguised as angels ! farewell Menage, 
Sarrasin, and Chavigny ! I renounce burlesque 
poems, comic romances and comedies, to go to a 

' Reconcile who can Scarron and Segrais upon a point on which both 
seem as if they ought to have been equally well-informed. Segrais says 
nothing about this Indian Company. " Scarron," he says, " intended to 
foi-m a company, the direction of which he offered to me, seeing that I 
was then more prudent than men usually are at my age, for I was then 
only twenty-five or twenty-six years old; and as I was connected with 
nothing at that time, I was not averse to undertake the management, but 
several obstacles arose which prevented the execution of this fine project." 
— " Segraisiana," p. 126. 



410 corneille's contemporaries. 

country where there will be no sham samts, no devout 
blacklegs, no inquisition, no winter to murder me, 
no inflammation to cripple me, and no war to make 
me die of hunger." ^ Scarron said farewell, but 
never departed; we do not know what hindered 
him ; but his mind had long been filled with this 
project, and he found it beneficial to talk about a 
country into which his imagination incessantly trans- 
ported him, with all the hopes of joy and health, 
and which these hopes adorned for him with all the 
colours of fairy-land. At this period, as Segrais 
informs us. Mile. d'Aubigne, whom he always 
mentions as Mme. de Maintenon, " who had just 
returned from America with her mother, lived 
opposite Scarron's house.'' ^ Did she reside with her 
mother 1 Segrais would seem to say so ; but then 
what would become of the story told of the servitude 
and oppression to which she was subjected by the 
parsimonious relative who, it is said, had given her 
a home P On the other hand, if Mile. d'Aubigne 
were not living with her mother, what interest would 
Scarron be likely to take in the acquaintance of a girl 
of fourteen or fifteen, who was kept in such subjection 
that she was hardly ever suffered to speak 1 However 
this may be. Mile. d'Aubigne visited Scarron ; she 
appeared at one of his parties in " too short a frock," * 

* Scarron, " QEuvres," vol. i. part 2, pp. 38, 39. ^ " Segraisiana," p. 126. 
•^ Mme. de Neuillant. See the various biographies of Scarron and 
Mme. de Mainteuon. ^ Scarron, " CEiivres," vol. i. part 2, p. 54. 



PAUL SCAKRON. 411 

aud, unable to endure this humiliation, she began to 
cry on entering the room. Scarron, as it appears, 
took Kttle notice, at first, of the child, but his 
attention was ere long aroused by a letter which 
Mile. d'Aubigne wrote to one of her friends. Mile, de 
Saint-Hermant. This letter was shown, we know 
not for what reason, to Scarron, and it struck him all 
the more because it was totally unexpected ; for, in 
his opinion, it was a singular phenomenon that a 
" little girl," ^ who did not know how to enter a 
room, should be able to write such remarkably clever 
letters. He entered into a correspondence with 
her ; mutual confidence was soon established ; and 
Scarron was ignorant of none of the details of a 
position well calculated to augment the interest 
inspired by a young and beautiful person.^ At 
length, as Segrais informs us, the wretched state of 
the affairs of both mother and daughter determined 
Scarron to ask Mile. d'Aubigne in marriage, though 

1 Scarron, " OEuvres," vol. i. part 2, p. 54. 
2 In vol. i. part 2, p. 64, of his Works, we find a letter which does not 
mention the name of the person to whom it was addressed, but which was 
evidently written to Mile. d'Aubign^, who was then ill in Poitou. This 
letter contains the following lines, which, at the present day, it would be 
thought somewhat strange to address to a girl of fifteen : — 
" Tandis que, la cuisse dtendue 
Dans un lit toute nue, 
Vous reposez votx'e corps blanc et gras 
Entre deux sales draps." 
He also expresses his fear that she does not receive " all the care that .she 
ought to have," and his grief " at seeing you," he says, ''as unfortunate a,s 
I am useless to you." 



412 oorneille's contemporaries. 

she was not more than fifteen years old/ Was this 
unfortunate situation regarded by Scarron as a 
motive of interest or as an encouragement ? Segrais 
does not inform us. Was he influenced by the com- 
passion which he felt for his pretty neighbour, or by 
his desire to obtain a companion whose care might 
alleviate his sufferings '? This is a question which it 
would be difiicult to decide ; pity might have inspired 
him with some other project than that of marriage, 
in favour of a pretty girl of fifteen ; and reason 
might have suggested a more experienced nurs^e. 
" What a plague it is that I love you ! '' he wrote to 
her while she was absent in Poitou, during the 
interval of two years which elapsed between the time 
when he first made her acquaintance and the period 
of his marriage, " and what a folly it is to love so 
much ! Upon my soul, I am continually tempted to 
start for Poitou, notwithstanding the cold weather. 
Is not this sheer madness 1 Ah ! come back, for 
heaven's sake, come back, since I am fool enough to 
take it into my head to regret absent beauties : I 

* Segrais tells us (''' Segraisiana," p. 126,) that the marriage took place 
after two years; as to the year in which it occurred, Segrais says (p. 160,) 
that it was in 1650, and (p. 157) in 1651. These Variations are natural 
enough in the recollections of an old man, not collected by himself, but 
from what he had been heard to relate. This same Segrais tells us (p. 12,) 
that he was born in 1625, and informs us (p. 160,) that he was born in 1624. 
From these contradictions let us try to extract the tnith. Suppose that 
Segrais, born in 1624, was, as he tells us, twenty -five years old at the time 
of the proposed voyage to America, this project would have been formed 
in 1649, and the marriage would have taken place two years afterwards, 
ip 1651. This conjecture is at least probable. 



PAUL SCARRON. 418 

ought to know myself better, and to consider that 
I have more than enough to make me a cripple from 
head to foot, without being troubled, in addition, by 
that devihsh disorder which is called hwpatience to 
see you ; this is indeed a cursed disease." It appears 
to me that, in the feeling which dictated this letter, 
there is something more than mere reason or kindness. 
Scarron doubtless had not entirely forgotten his 
youth ; his mind was more than ever filled with the 
idea of a voyage to America ; and it is impossible to 
say what hopes may not have passed through the 
head of the invaHd. At length, Scarron married ; 
gave up the notion of going to America ; was not 
cured ; and probably renounced all hope but that of 
those momentary alleviations which formed the 
happiness of his existence, and all other pleasures 
but those which he might derive fi:om the society of 
an amiable person. On the very day of his marriage, 
he said, speaking of his wife : "I shall not do her 
any follies, but I shall teach her a great many." ^ 
There is reason to beheve that he kept his word on 
both points. 

Of all persons, however, whom he could have 
chosen, Mme. Scarron was perhaps the least fitted 
for that kind of jokes which he did not fail to make 
at her expense ; - and she was also the only person 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 97. 
2 Segrais, talking with Scairon, soon after his mari'iage, inquired, 
whether seriously or not I cannot tell, what hopes and means he had of 



414 CORNEILLES CONTEMPORARIES. 

capable of arresting, or at least moderating, his bad 
habits. " Before they had been married three years," 
says Segrais, " she had corrected him of a great many 
things." ^ But how, when only seventeen years old, 
at an age when virtue is so timid, and modesty is 
afraid even to intimate that it is offended, — how, with 
fewer means of persuasion, perhaps, than a woman 
usually possesses over her husband, did she so quickly 
attain to sufficient influence to overcome habits so 
deeply rooted '? How came this influence to extend 
over all those visitors whom her husband had accus- 
tomed to such unrestrained freedom ? Mme. de 
Caylus, to whom the fact had been confirmed by 
all the contemporaries of her aunt,^ tells us with 
astonishment that this young person, " by her 
virtuous and modest manners, inspired so much 
respect that none of the young men who surrounded 
her ever ventured to utter any words of double 
meaning in her presence."^ In the innocence and 

obtaining a posterity. "■' Do you offer," said Scarron, laugliingly, " to do me 
this pleasure ? Maugin here will do me that service whenever I please." 
Maugin was his valet-de-chanibre, and a very good fellow. " Maugin," con- 
tinued Scarron, "will you not beget a child for my wife?" Maugin 
replied : " Yes, sir, if it please God." " This answer, which Maugin had to 
repeat more than a hundred times, made all those laugh who were accus- 
tomed to visit Scarron." " Segraisiana," p. 156. Perhaps Mme. Scarron had 
to laugh with the rest. 

1 "Segraisiana," p. 159. 

2 " I was not told these particulars by herself alone, but by my father, 
by the Marquis de Beuvron, and by many others, who lived in the house at 
the same time." " Souvenirs de Caylus," p. 8. 

2 Ibid. It is not easy to reconcile this statement with the account which 
Scarron himself gives of the tone of his visitors, in a letter to M. de Vivonne. 



I 



PAUL SCARRON. 415 

modesty of youth, there is something which all 
hesitate to wound, for fear of sullying it lustre ; and 
youth thus derives, from the enthusiasm pecuhar to 
it, an austere courage which sometimes astonishes 
reason itself Scarron's house, meanwhile, lost none 
of its charms ; for, with the strict propriety of her 
age, Mme. Scarron had introduced the refined 
tastes of a mind well adapted to profit by all that 
was so lavishly displayed around her. " Mme. de 
Maintenon," says Segrais, " is indebted for her wit to 
Scarron, and she knows it ; " ^ and Scarron, on his 
part, freely acknowledged the fertility of the soil 
which he had cultivated. " Mme. de Maintenon, 
who was a lady of perfect msdom," continues 
Segrais, " rendered important services to Scarron ; for 
he consulted her regarding his works, and profited 
greatly by her corrections." ^ 

The wife, however, who had acquired sufficient 
influence over her husband to curb and regulate his 
imagination to a considerable extent, was unable to 
introduce into her household that orderly manage- 
ment which was required by the state of their 
finances. Shortly after his marriage, Scarron had 
lost the lawsuit which had been his plague for so 
long a time. This is, at least, stated as a fact by the 
" Muse de Loret ; " ^ but it is somewhat difficult to 



' " Segraisiana," p. 99. - Ibid. p. 127. 

^ A kind of literary gazette, in which nearly all the litei-aiy events 



416 corneille's contemporaries. 

reconcile this assertion with another statement 
equally well authenticated, that about this time his 
relatives restored to him the property which he had 
made over to them as a gift/ Whatever this 
property may have been, it is probable that Scarron 
was never able to turn it to much account. 
Menage tell us that " he possessed a house, which 

of the time were recorded. In the number for June 9, 1653, we 
read : — 

" M. Scarron, esprit insigne, 
Et qui n'^crit aucune ligne, 
Du moins en quality d'auteur, 
Qui ne plaise fort au lecteur, 
Avoit un proces d'importance 
Au premier parlement de France, 
Lequel il a perdu tout net ; 
Plusieurs opinant du bonnet 
En faveur de sa belle-mere." 
The gazetteer then compliments Scarron upon this circumstance, as deliver- 
ing him from a very unpleasant dilemma : — 
•'* Car avec sa paralysie 
Ce seroit un mal plein d'exces 
Qu'une femme avec un proces." 
One thing might lead us to doubt the testimony of the " Muse de Loret," 
and that is, that it speaks of Scarron's mother in-law as alive, whereas 
Scarron, in his " Factum," five or six years before, mentions her as dead. 

^ In several passages in his Works he mentions this gift with regret. In 
his " Epitre a M. Fourzeau," vol, viii. p. 132. he says : — 
" Et surtout le Seigneur vous garde 
D'etre donataire entre vifs ; " 
and in his " Epitre k Mgr. Rosteau," vol. viii, p. 234, he says :— 
'' Tu sais comme on m'a guerdonnd, 
Quand en sot j'ai mon bien donn^." 
This last letter is dated in 1648. Segrais tells us positively (p. 88) : 
" When he married he had no property, for he had given the little he pos- 
sessed to his relatives ; but they returned it to him." The same Segrais 
tells us (p, 126,) that when Scarron asked Mile. d'Aubign^ in marriage, he 
said that " until they started for the Indies, they could live very comfort- 
ably on his small estate and his marquisate of Quinette." 



PAUL SCAEKOX. 417 

he sold to M. Nuble for fourteen thousand francs. 
M. Nuble, thinking it was worth more, gave him 
sixteen thousand. Upon this, M. Scarron wrote to 
me, begging me to call upon him. At first he told 
me with great seriousness, as if he had been ofi'ended : 
' M. Nuble has played me an unprecedented trick. 
What do you think ? I sold him a house for four- 
teen thousand francs, and he has sent me sixteen 
thousand. I repeat again, sir, this is contrary to all 
custom ; and I have therefore requested you to call 
upon me about it/ '' * Segrais, who relates the same 
anecdote, says that this house of Scarron's was 
situated near Amboise, where all the property ot 
Councillor Scarron la}'-. Neither Segrais nor Menage 
fix the date of this circumstance ; but the natural 
inference from their story is that Scarron still 
possessed some property, and that he sold it ; from 
which we may further conclude that he spent its 
proceeds in his usual way. His expenditure and 
embarrassments continued after his marriage just 
as before it. His incessantly recurring wants were 
insufficiently supplied even by the princely liberahty of 
Fouquet, whose taste for literature and whose natural 
munificence had received an additional stimulus in 
favour of Scarron from the recommendation of his 
friend Pelisson, and the friendship of Madame 
Fouquet, who was all the more sensible to the charms 

' •* M^uagiana," vol. iii. p. 201. 



418 corneille's contemporaries. 

of Madame Scarron because she had nothing to fear 
from the effect which they might produce upon her 
husband. We are told that a present of a thousand 
crowns, sent to Scarron by the hands of PeHsson, were 
of essential service— 

" Faire lever le siege ou le blocus 
Dont creanciers, gens de mauvais visage, 
D'esprit mauvais, de plus mauvais langage, 
Sourds h la plainte ainsi qu'h, la raison, 
Troubloient souvent la paix de la maison." ^ 

But the storm thus calmed was quickly followed by 
other storms. Scarron, in several letters, entreats 
the support of Fouquet to obtain the concession of a 
privilege which would " retrieve his position in the 
world,^' and yield him an income of four or five 
thousand livres. " This is," he says, " the last hope 
of my wife and myself"^ And so great was his 
distress that, on one occasion when he thought his 
request had been rejected, he wrote to his protector 
that he had fallen ill of grief, and added : " If you 
knew what we have to fear, and what will become of 
us if this affair does not succeed, you would not be 
astonished at the despair of M. de Vissins and myself, 
if I may be allowed to speak of him in these terms. 
Otherwise, all we have to do is to poison ourselves." ^ 

1 " Epttre a Pelisson," vol. viii. p. 108. 

2 *■' Lettre au Surintendant," vol. i. part 2, p. 116. The privilege was to 
establish, a company of porters at the gates of Paris. 

3 Ibid. p. 106. These letters, as well as Scarron's various works, are so 
carelessly arranged, even in the best editions, that the order of facts, which 
might have been used to gain at least a presumption of the dates, is con- 



PAUL SCARRON. 419 

The affair succeeded ; Scarron sold his privilege and 
bought it again ; and probably always made bad 
bargains. At another time, his letters inform us that 
he had promised, for six hundred pistoles, to use his 
influence with the Superintendent of the Finances in 
reference to an affair on which he had to decide ; 
and when a favourable decision had been given, 
Scarron applied to the Superintendent himself, in 
order to obtain from the parties interested the 
payment of the sum which they had promised, but 
now refused. The task of obtaining money occupied 
all that portion of his life which he did not employ in 
spending it. 

Amid his embarrassments, misfortunes and gaiety, 
Scarron was fast approaching his end. His body, worn 
out by disease, could no longer continue the conflict 
it had maintained for twenty years. He knew that 
his death was at hand, and he contemplated its 
arrival with a tranquillity which was perhaps more 
astonishing than the vivacity of mind which he 
preserved to the last moment of his life. When 
Segrais was about to start for Bordeaux, whither 
the Court had proceeded on the occasion of the 
king's marriage, he called to take leave of Scarron. 
" I feeV said the latter, " that I shall soon die ; and 
my only regret is that I can leave no property to my 

tinually transposed. For example, we find in a letter contained on p. 104, 
the continuation of an affair which is begun on p. IIG. This M. de Vissius 
was apparently Sc?aTon's partner in this business. 

E E 2 



420 CORNEILLE's COXTEMPOE ARIES. 

\vife, who is a person of infinite merit, and whom I 
have every imaginable reason to praise."^ Shortly 
afterwards a fatal crisis increased his ordinary suffer- 
ings ; he was attacked by a hiccough so violent that 
his feeble frame seemed scarcely able to withstand 
it. " If I recover," he said, during an interval of 
calmness, " I will write a tremendous satire upon 
the hiccough." " His friends," says Menage, who 
relates this circumstance, " expected he would 
announce a totally different resolution."^ But 
Scarron had now reached the last stage of the disease 
which had tortured him so long ; and he was soon 
reduced to extremities. " My children," he said to 
his relatives and domestics, who stood weeping 
around his bed, " you will never weep as much as 
I have made you laugh." ^ Segrais, on his return 
from Bordeaux, saw nothing of Scarron ; but, being 
unaware of his death, he went to visit him. " When 
I arrived at his door," he says, " I saw them carrying 
out of his house the chair on which he always used 
to sit, and which had just been sold by auction."^ 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 127. ^ " Menagiana/' vol. iii. p. 290. 

^ " Menagiana/' vol. iii. p. 291. 

'^ " Segraisiana," p. 150. Segrais places Scarron's death in the month of 
June, 1660; and the circumstance of his journey to attend the king's 
marriage, which actually took place at that period, would not allow us to 
suppose him mistaken, if, on the other hand, we did not find the same 
news chronicled in the " Muse de Loret," under date of the 10th October. 
We also possess a letter of Scarron's, dated September 5, 1660 (vol. i. part 2, 
p. 160) ; but is this date correct? He mentions in this letter that his affair 
has just been signed, and we know of no other affair of his than the com- 
pany of porters, which must have been arranged long before. His letter to 



1 



PAUL SCAERON. 421 

So soon had the little that remained of this singular 
man, and even the remembrance of his habits, dis- 
appeared from that house which had so long been 
animated bj his presence. 

With Scarron perished in France that kind of 
poetry which he had so largely contributed to render 
popular. It is a fantastic style, devoid of rules and 
of fixed character, the whole secret of which consists 
in the art of emplo3dng falsehood with skill ; of 
substituting, for the true relations of objects, relations 
which are entirely contrary to their nature ; and of 
thus surprising the imagination with impressions 
exactly opposite to those which it expected to receive, 
amusing the mind by what it does not believe, and 
deriving pleasure from the ver}^ impropriety of the 
images presented to its notice. As the imitation of 
reality is never the object aimed at in burlesque 
composition, in judging of works of this kind we have 
no means of comparison derived from real objects, 
and are guided by none of those rules of taste which 
reason deduces from the nature of things. We 



the Count de Vivonne, which has ah'eady been frequently quoted, bears 
the date of June 12, 1660, and this date cannot be contested, as the letter 
turns chiefly upon the king's marriage, and the journey to Bordeaux, which 
had already commenced. " I am continually gi'owing worse," he says in 
this letter, " and I find myself advancing towards my end faster than I 
could wish." It is true that this letter is long, interspersed with prose and 
verse, and that it contains details which prove that no alteration had as yet 
been made in Scarron's mode of life ; but his habits had been so long asso- 
ciated with his disease, that they may have continued unchanged until his 
death. 



422 corneille's contemporaries. 

cannot even assign any determinate form to 
burlesque. For things which really exist, there is only 
one, or a few modes of existence ; but the number 
of modes in which they do not exist is incalculable. 
" The reverse of the truth," says Montaigne, " has a 
hundred thousand shapes and an indefinite field. A 
thousand routes lead astray from the centre, but one 
leads to it." * We may travesty in a thousand ways 
that which we can properly delineate in one shape 
only ; there may therefore be as many different 
kinds of burlesque as there are turns of mind and 
imagination applied to this kind of composition. 
Thus the burlesque of Scarron is by no means 
identical with that of Rabelais, and it is useless to 
inquire in what respects either of them may have 
been indebted to the Italian burlesque poets who 
were their contemporaries or predecessors ; for that 
which they have borrowed would be precisely that 
which would not be worth remarking in their 
works, the piquancy of which can consist only in 
their utterly unexpected originality. Rabelais was 
doubtless indebted to models for the gigantic subject 
of his work, but this is of very little importance ; 
had the subject been entirely his own invention, if 
this were his sole merit, Rabelais would have been 
entirely unknown at the present day. But when the 
subject was once given, the manner in which Rabelais 

1 Montaigne, " Essais." book i. chap. 9. 



PAUL SCAERON. 423 

treated it, the points which he drew out of it, the 
kind of relative truth which he imparted to the 
details of a fantastic picture, — these belong to the 
peculiar nature of his imagination, and constitute the 
originality and charm of his work. 

The subject of "Typhon'' belongs still less to 
Scarron, than his " Grand- Gousier," his " Gargantua," 
and his " Pantagruel " belong to Rabelais. Scarron's 
" Typhon"— 

''A qui cent bras longs comme gaules 
Sortoient de deux seules epaules," 

with his brothers Mimas, Enceladus, and others — 

" Qui certes ne lui cedoient gu^re 
Tant k deraciner les monts 
Qu'k passer ces rivieres sans ponts, 
Mettre les plus hautes montagues 
Au niveau des plates canipagnes, 
Et de grands pins faire batons 
Qui n'etoient encore assez longs ; " 

all the details of the wondrous exploits of this race of 
giants contain nothing which had not long ago been 
far surpassed by the heroes of Rabelais, of the 
" Gigantea," ^ and of a host of other works of the 
same kind. But a new mode of bringing these 
singular personages into action had presented itself 
to the original imagination of Scarron ; although it is 
not well suited to the subject which he had chosen 
out of imitation, it is peculiarly his own ; it is 
characteristic of the peculiar conformation of a mind 

^ An Italian burlesque poem, of the sixteenth century. See 0\ 
" Histoire littcraire d'ltalie," vol. v. p. 561. 



424 corneille's contemporaries. 

which could see things only from a certain point of 
view, and could describe them only as it saw them. 
After having described these monstrous children of 
earth, for what purposes will Scarron employ them 1 
What motive will rouse them to rebellion against the 
gods, and kindle a war which will throw all Olympus 
into confusion '? One Sunday, Typhon, 

" Apres avoir tres-bieu din^," 

proposes to his brothers to have a game of skittles. 
His proposal is accepted ; but, while playing, Mimas 
awkwardly hits him with a skittle on the ankle. 
Typhon, in a rage, seizes upon both balls and skittles, 
and hurls them through the skies with such vigour 
that they penetrate into Heaven, and knock over the 
table and break the glasses of Jupiter, who, being 
rather more drunk than usual on that day, jumps up, 

■' Jui-e deux fois par 1' Alcoran ; 
C'^toit son serment ordinaire," 

and sends Mercury to earth to command the giants, 
on pain of incurring his wrath and thunderbolts, to 
send him, before the end of the week, a hundred 
Venice glasses to repair the loss occasioned by the 
overthrow of his sideboard. 

From this specimen it is easy to perceive the 
character of Scarron's burlesque. All the pleasantry 
which he can educe from it depends entirely upon 
those common or puerile habits, and those petty and 
vulgar incidents of which he composes his portraitures 



PAUL SCAERON. 425 

of the marvellous personages whom he introduces into 
his productions. Mercury, on crossing Helicon, is 
regaled by the Muses with a " pot of cherries," 

'•' Et du dedans d'un grand pate^ 
Qu'Apollon, leur Dieii tutelaire, 
Depuis peu leur avoit fait faire." 

Being compelled to pass a night on earth, Mercury 
sleeps at the top of a tree, for fear of robbers ; and 
all that he obtains from the giants, in answer to his 
eloquent orations, is the refrain of a popular song, 
and the promise of a sound box on the ears if he talks 
any longer. War is declared, and Jupiter calls upon 
the Sun to sell him some of his exhalations for the 
manufacture of thunderbolts : — 

'■' Le soleil dit qu'il en avoit, 
Mais que dejk on lui devoit 
D'argent une somme assez bonne, 
Qu'au ciel on ne payoit personne." 

He also complains that the last materials he supplied 
were only used — 

" A faii-e petards et fusees ; " 

but eventually he does not refuse his assistance. 
Jupiter appears armed for battle, mounted on his 
eagle, and holding — 

" Un gi-and tonnerre a son cotd." 

Mars passes his time in smoking tobacco and drinking 
beer : — 

" Et de vouloir Ten empecher, 
C'^toit vouloir au sourd precher, 
Car il n'^toit pas amiable. 
Ains juroit Dieu comma un vrai diablc." 



426 coeneille's contemporaries. 

Jupiter, on his side, calls Venus all the bad names 
that she deserves, and the tone of the other gods 
corresponds with that of the most powerftil of them 
all. In a word, Scarron has travestied Olympus into 
a family of vulgar citizens. 

Nothing, therefore, could have been less adapted to 
Scarron's turn of mind than the subject which he 
had chosen. As he was entirely destitute of that 
imaginative power which can forcibly depict the 
fantastic and extraordinary, and as he was, on the 
contrary, endowed with the faculty of vividly distin- 
guishing all the details of a common and trivial truth, 
he has overloaded his personages with such details, 
although the position in which he has placed them 
would seem to destine them to surprise us rather by 
the singularity of their behaviour than by any other 
circumstance. It was not worth while to describe 
to us gods and giants, if he intended to make them 
act constantly like ordinary men, and never to recal 
our attention to the marvellous greatness of their 
nature, which is so well adapted to bring the littleness 
of their interests and actions into strong relief. 
Jupiter, disguised as Cassandra, would be amusing 
enough, if the Cassandra who is always present to 
our view did not make us ever forget the existence of 
the Jupiter. 

Taking the nature of Scarron's talent into consi- 
deration, the idea of the " Virgile Travesti '' must be 



PAUL SCAERON. 427 

regarded as infinitely happier than that of the 
" Typhon/' It may have been furnished him by the 
" Eneide Travestita " of Giovanni Battista LalH, an 
ItaHan poet, who may almost be called his con- 
temporary ; ^ but " with the exception of the title," 
says Menage, "the two works are entirely different/'^ 
The choice of such a subject, moreover, was certainly 
not very difficult ; but it was admirably adapted to 
call forth Scarron's powers. Here he was not required 
to create exalted personages, in order to render them 
afterwards absurd and ridiculous. He found ready 
made to his hand, noble lines which he might parody, 
imposing recollections which he might load with 
laughable details, splendid imagery which he might 
travesty, and, throughout the work, a contrast 
naturally existing between his subject and the 
manner in which he was disposed to treat it. Virgil 
always saved him at least half his trouble. We 
might laugh to see a man who is endeavouring to 
save something from his burning house, carefully 
folding up : — 

" Six chemises, dont son pourpoint 
Fut trop jxiste de plus d'xin point," 

and prudently ordering his son to carry off " the 
snuffers ;" but the household economy thus ascribed 
to the son of Venus and the lover of Dido, and these 
details when related by a king to a queen in regard 

' Lalli died in 1637. '^ " Menagiana," vol. i. p. 188. 



428 coeneille's contemporaries. 

to so great an event as the sack of Troy, acquire 
a comic value which would not be possessed by 
a meaner subject or humbler personages. The 
remembrance which we retain of the despair and 
lamentations of Dido imparts additional pleasantry 
to the reproaches which, in the " Virgile Travesti,'' 
she heaps upon iEneas, whom she finally calls a 
"lackey," and threatens to pursue him after her 
death, 

" Pour lui faire partout hou, hou ! " 

All the piquancy possessed by the " Virgile 
Travesti," is derived from contrasts of this kind, and 
from that peculiar turn of Scarron's imagination, 
which I have already noticed in my remarks on the 
" Typhon," and which never represents any objects 
to him except under their most common forms, and 
accompanied by the most familiar details of ordinary 
life. In his view the marvellous disappears, and the 
extraordinary vanishes, to make room for that which 
is of daily occurrence. He cannot add to the 
monstrous any element of the grotesque ; and thus his 
Harpies, with — 

" Leiirs pattes en chapon r6ti, 
Leur nez long, lexir ventre apl&ti," 

are not stranger figures than those of Virgil ; but, 
when eating and spoiling the dinner of the Trojans, 
they begin to sing "drinking songs," the Harpies, 
transformed into a pack of drunkards at a public- 
house, acquire a very amusing character. 



PAUL SCAREON. 429 

A sort of childish naturalness mingles with the 
actions and feelings of all his personages ; thus when 
^neas, in the midst of burning Troy, is desirous to 
avenge upon Helen the wrongs of his country, by 
freeing her for ever from — 

" La peine de se plus moucher," 

Venus, his mother, appears suddenly to him, and 
stops him with a hard rap on the knuckles : — 

*' Ce coup, dit-il, dont ma main fut cinglee, 
Et dont j'eus I'ame un peu troublee, 
Me fit dire, en quoi j'eus gi-and tort, 
Certain mot qui I'offensa fort. 
Elle me dit, rouge au visage ; 
' Vraiment je vous croyois plus sage ; 
Fi, fi, je ne vous aime plus.' 
— ' Je suis de quatre doigts perclus,' 
Lui dis-je : * et qui diable ne jure 
Alors qu'on regoit telle injure ? ' — 
' Eh bien, ne jui'ez done jamais,' 
Dit-elle. — ' Je vous le promets,' 
Lui dis-je, 'et tr^ve de houssine, 
Car il n'est divin, ni divine 
A qui, s'il m'en faisoit autant 
Je ne le rendisse b, I'instant.' " 

Sometimes the opinions of the author himself are 
expressed with the most original simplicity; thus, 
after having described the capture of Ganymede, and 
told how the youth's dog barked uselessly at the 
ravisher, he exclaims, with a burst of virtuous 
indignation : — 

" Que le chien de Jean de Nivelle, 
Aupr^s de ce matin de bien, 
Est un abominable chien." 

But, whether he speaks in the name of his cha- 



430 gorneille's contempoeaeies. 

racters, or in his own name, the ideas most familiar 
to the habits of his own Hfe are always brought into 
greatest prominence by Scarron. His Sibyl, in order 
to appease Charon's indignation at being required to 
admit a living man into his boat, enumerates the 
good qualities of ^neas, saying that he was — 

" Point Mazarin, fort honnete homme." 

And ^neas, in despair at seeing his ships on fire, 
implores Jupiter to send a little of that rain which 
he sometimes pours forth with such abundance, — 

" Alors qu'on s'en passeroit bien, 
Qu'iin cliapeau neuf ne dure rien." 

'No one is better able than Scarron to discern, in 
an event, all the little circumstances which may enter 
into it ; thus when iEneas, notwithstanding the 
advice of the Sibyl, draws his sword to disperse the 
shades who flit about him on his entrance into 
the infernal regions, the poet does not fail to make 
him fall on his face, toppled over by the impetus of 
a blow with which he had attempted to transfix a 
Gorgon, whose fantastic body offered no resistance to 
his thrust ; and he then dilates od the bad temper of 
iEneas, — 

" Jurant en cliartier embourbe/' 

and on the politeness with which the Sibyl offers him 
her hand to help him up. His pictures, on account 
of the details of which they are composed, are always 
characterised by a sort of trivial truthfiilness, well 



PAUL SCARRON. 431 

adapted to give piquancy and appropriateness to the 
application whicli lie makes of them to lofty objects. 
But this truthfulness is sometimes devoid of interest ; 
and these details are not always worthy of occu- 
pying attention, or capable of exciting laughter. For 
example, Scarron tells us that ^neas, being desirous 
to honour with an offering of incense the shade 
of his father, who has come to visit him, fails in his 
attempt : — 

" Et remplit sa chambre de braise, 
Ayant donne centre une chaise ;" 

a circumstance which, though not wanting in truth- 
fulness, is utterly destitute of pleasantry. And 
circumstances of this kind are not of rare occurrence 
in Scarron's works ; he never rejects any insignificant 
details which may occur to his mind, and he often 
unreasonably protracts most witless reflections, 
through a series of namby-pamby verses which are 
more prosaic than even prose would be permitted to 
be. Expressions frequently more trivial than original 
strike us, more from their contrast to the object to 
which they refer, than from their adaptation to the 
image which the poet wishes to convey ; and finally, 
his gaiety, though rarely indecent, too often reminds 
us of that school-boy blackguardism which is inac- 
cessible to disgust, and which is never embarrassed 
by the feelings it may occasion. Hence it is that the 
" Virgile Travesti," some passages of which are 



432 coeneille's contemporaries. 

worthy to be quoted as models of truly original 
gaiety, cannot be read consecutively for a quarter 
of an hour, and that it leaves no impression on the 
memory but the recollection of a few lines, and the 
general impression of a buffoonery which often causes 
greater fatigue than amusement. 

This is not the case in reference to the " Eoman 
Comique/' " Scarron's ' Roman Comique,' " says 
Segrais, " had not a dignified object, as I have told 
the author himself; for he amuses himself by criti- 
cising the actions of certain comedians, which is too 
mean an occupation for such a man as he is." ^ We 
are not aware of Scarron's reply to these observations 
of Segrais ; he probably defended his work, and most 
probably not on the best grounds ; for an author is 
seldom aware of his most effective means of defence. 
Scarron, however, had excellent reasons to adduce ; 
but Segrais was perhaps incapable of understanding 
them. At this period criticism did not exist, and no 
rules of taste had as yet been firmly established by 
reason, which is the true foundation of taste ; every 
one formed his opinions according to his own special 
turn of mind, and absolutely rejected whatever he 
was unable to appreciate. Segrais, whose imagination 
had spent all its life in bergeries and Court romances, 
was naturally somewhat insensible to the influence of 
that ingenuous truthfulness which presents itself to 

^ " Segraisiana," p. 194. 



PAUL SCARRON, 433 

view, devoid even of the charms of a careful toilette. 
However — 

" S"il a'est pas de serpent, ni j|p monstre odieux 
Qui, pai' I'art incite, ne puisse plaire aux yeiix, " ^ 

with. still greater reason, art will succeed in adapting 
to our delicate taste subjects whose only fault is that 
they are somewhat removed from those ideas of 
elegance to which we are accustomed. 

The principal personages in Scarron's romance 
are not mean, -although he has not made them all 
respectable. On our entrance into the town of Mans, 
in which the scene is laid, amidst the grotesque 
description of a troop of poor country actors en 
deshabille, the author at once inspires us with a 
favourable opinion of his hero, the actor Destin, " a 
3^oung man as poor in clothes as he was rich in good 
looks,'' and whose rather irregular accoutrement does 
not destroy the impression produced by th^se first 
words of the author. This impression is kept up 
and strengthened by the conduct of the young- 
man himself, whose noble sentiments, in so inferior 
and undignified a position, are explained by the 
education he had received, and the necessity which 
had compelled him to adopt his present mode of life. 
The decency preserved by his companions, L'Etoile, 
Angelique, and La Caverne, though a rare quality in 
strolling actresses, is nevertheless in strict accordance 

' Boileau, " Art Poetique." 



431- CORNEILLES CONTEMPOEAEIES. 

with the probabihty required in a romance, the chief 
object of which is not to extol the virtue and senti- 
ments of its heroines. This decency is maintained 
in the midst of scenes,; of every kind, which occur 
during the journey of the troop, whose adventures 
in the town and neighbourhood of Mans constitute 
the subject of the " Roman Comique.'^ Some 
characters, inferior to these at least in their sen- 
timents, undertake the more comical adventures ; 
and thus allow to the principal personages a dignity 
.which does not at first sight seem consistent with 
their profession, and the sorry trim in which they 
are presented. 

We might inquire of Segrais in what respect this 
profession and its attendant circumstances seem to him 
to injure the proprieties of romance ; why romance, 
any more than comedy, should be deprived of the 
right of treating undignified subjects ; and in what 
particulars the actions of a few comedians are more 
low and vulgar than the household quarrels of a 
woodman and his wife,^ the knaveries of a valet/ or 
the flatteries of an intriguing person who is desirous 
to get money from a miser ? ^ Wherever talent is 
placed in its right position, the subject is well 
chosen ; and nowhere was Scarron's talent more 
rightly placed than in the " Roman Comique ; " and 

^ See Molihe's " Medecin malgre lui.'' 

2 See the " Fourberies de Scapin." 

•^ See Moliere's " L'Avare," and other pieces. 



PAUL SCARROI^. 435 

nowhere lias it produced more complete effect. 
These personages are not presented to us disfigured 
in a fantastical manner in order to excite our mirth ; 
the J are exhibited to our view under the natural 
forms of their condition, position, and character ; 
they are laughable because they are ridiculous, and 
not because an effort has been made to render them 
absurd. Their pleasantry springs from their very 
nature. There is something truly original in the 
character of La Rancune, a misanthropic, envious, vain 
scoundrel, whose imperturbable coolness has, never- 
theless, gained for him a sort of superiority and 
respect. The figure of Ragotin is ever the same, 
— always equally merry in the various adventures 
in which he is involved by his love or his foolishness. 
The scenes in which these different actors appear are 
varied ; the descriptions are vivid, animated, and 
striking ; in a word, although the " Roman Comique" 
is not marked by that force of observation, and that 
fund of philosophical truth which place " Gril Bias " 
in the first rank of productions of this kind, we 
find it characterised at least by great fidelity in 
the reproduction of external and laughable forms, 
by consummate talent in their arrangement and 
delineation, by an imagination most fruitful in the 
invention of details, by a careful choice of circum- 
stances, and by a measure of pleasantry which we 
were not perhaps prepared to expect from the 

F F 2 



480 PAUL SC AKRON. 

author : in a word, we find in it all those qualities 
which can entitle it to high praise, not as a burlesque 
composition, but as its name indicates, as a really 
comic work. 

I shall say nothing of Scarron's comedies — works 
which their complicated and uninteresting plots, 
their trivial and unnatural folly, and their strained 
burlesque, have consigned to that oblivion which they 
so richly deserve. If one of the Jodelets and Dom 
Japhet d'Armenie have sometimes re-appeared in our 
own days, it has only been by the aid of the talent of 
some clever actor, who has redeemed the tediousness of 
these ignoble caricatures, and disguised their excessive 
platitude by his excessive grotesqueness. Some of 
ScaiTon's " Nouvelles," Dedications and Letters, with 
his " Factum," and a very few short poems, are the 
sources to which we may still look for the piquant 
originality of that mind and character, the singular 
combination of which gained Scarron a reputation 
which, in his own times, was superior to that which 
his works deserved ; and which at the present day 
has fallen below that which his talent might have 
merited if, less spoilt by the taste of the age in which 
he lived and the fluency of the style in which he 
achieved such brilliant success, he had been compelled 
to cultivate to a greater extent those natural gifts 
which had been so abundantly lavished upon him. 



APPENDIX. 



Appendix A. — Page 141. 
PIERRE CORNEILLE, THE FATHER, 

AND THE LETTERS OP NOBILITY GRANTED TO HIS FAMILY BY LOUIS XIIL, 
AND LOUIS XIV., IN 1637 AND 1669. 

Extract from a Memoir read hy M. Floquet at the Academy of Rouen, 
January 20, 1837. 

The readiness with which you have always received any new 
documents relative to the illustrious Corneille may, I think, 
assure me that a favourable reception will be given to a document 
which I have very recently discovered, even though it concerns, 
not the great poet himself, but his father — who, as you know, 
exercised at Eouen, for about thirty years, the functions of 
general overseer of waters and forests. This honourable post 
was not always without its perils ; at that time, interminable wars, 
protracted famines, frequent interruptions of commercial and 
industrial operations, often reduced our province, and especially 
its capital, to a condition of misery such as we can in these times 
with difficulty imagine. The people, having neither food nor 
occupation, could scarcely be restrained from violation of order ; 
seditious movements were not unfrequent, and it was even a 
fortunate circumstance when the famished multitude confined 
their turbulence to the forests which bordered on the town of 
Rouen. In the ancient registers of the Parliament continual 
allusion is made to the devastation of these forests, not by 
a few isolated individuals, but by numerous bands, almost 
always armed, who were the terror of the forest constabulary, 



438 APPENDIX. 

whom they boldly faced ai]d put to flight, and whom they some- 
times even killed. 

During the long administration of Corneille the father, in the 
reign of Louis XIII., nothing was more frequent than these 
scenes of pillage, and all the perseverance, all the intrepidity 
which the overseer of woods and forests could command were 
required in order to suppress them. To confine myself to one 
fact among the many others which are to be found in the regis- 
ters of the Parliament of Normandy, we find that in the month 
of January, 1612, the elder Corneille resisted in person the 
armed bands who every day pillaged the forest of Roumare. ^ It 
is a singular fact that, out of twelve* sergeants who had been 
previously appointed to guard the forests bordering on Rouen, 
eight had just been dismissed at a time when the robbers in these 
woods were continually being multiplied. Corneille the elder, 
however, followed by only four sergeants, and assisted by a substi- 
tute of the Procureur-General, went on horseback to the scene of 
these disorders. On the road to Bapaume he was met by a band 
of fifteen or twenty plunderers, armed with bill-hooks and 
hatchets. To the remonstrances of Corneille these desperate 
men answered roughly " that they were going to the forest and 
were dying with hunger and cold." Corneille, even though 
attended by so few followers, did not hesitate to order that some 
of the hatchets and implements with which these men were armed 
should be taken away from them. This, however, was not 
accomplished without some difficulty, and " it was suspected," 
says the register, *' that a revolt was rising against him and his 
colleagues." A few moments after this, one of his four sergeants 
was maltreated by the advanced guard of another band, consisting 
of more than three hundred armed plunderers ; who, having 
descended from the forest of Roumare, laden with wood, took up 
their position in line along the avenues — " and there was danger," 
says the register, " lest they should fall upon Pierre Corneille and 
those who accompanied him." He hastened his return to Rouen, 
and reported to the Parliament the particulars of his adventure, 
which we have reproduced almost verbatim. This sovereign 
tribunal perceived what disastrous consequences would result from 
such disorders, " not only," say the king's servants, " in the 

^ " Rcgistre secret du Parlement cle Rouen." (Manuscript.) Jan. 7tli, 1612. 



APPENDIX. 439 

injury caused to the forests, but in the disposition to revolt which 
would manifest itself whenever scarcity should arrive." Accord- 
ingly, acting according to the information supplied by Pierre 
Corneille, they took such measures as put a stop, at least for a 
time, to these popular movements. If we reflect on all the similar 
cases, so frequent during the reign of Louis XIII., when, during 
an administration of thirty years, the elder Corneille had thus to 
resist in person, and, it may be said, alone, the outbreaks of a 
people reduced to desperation by famine, — we shall feel how 
justly he merited the lettres de noblesse which were granted to 
him, and which we have only recently discovered, after the 
lengthened but fruitless searches which have been made at different 
times by those who were interested in the descendants of the 
great poet. Not that, — we would carefully assert this, — not that 
we are insensible to the fact that any nobility which is granted by 
royal charter must appear insignificant when compared with that 
higher nobility which the great Corneille has won for himself by 
iiis works and his genius. None can feel this more than we do ; 
yet, in our times, when so much and unwearied attention is given 
to curious investigations, when information concerning such men 
as Corneille is eagerly sought after, why should we slight the 
remembrance of a mark of honour which was conferred in 
acknowledgment of long and eminent services upon the father of 
this great man — a distinction, moreover, of which our great poet 
and his brother Thomas always availed themselves? This was 
sufficiently natural, doubtless, at a time when such titles could in 
certain places secure an honourable reception, which might, 
perhaps, have been denied to unadorned native talent, — and in 
an age which was so profusely supplied with luminaries, and had 
attained to so high a philosophical eminence, that the man of 
worth who was not somewhat graced by wealth or distinguislied 
rank was sometimes rather at a discount. Accordingly, as sons 
of a Le Pesant de Bois-Guilbert (a name which, for a long 
time, has been an honourable one in that province, and is even 
still honoured there) — as sons of a conscientious and intrepid 
magistrate, ennobled on account of numerous services, and of no 
mean repute, — Pierre and Thomas Corneille (the one entitled 
Sieur do Damville, the other, Sieur de Lisle, and both of them 
squires), were received into distinguished circles, at first as 



440 APPENDIX. 

gentlemen of a good family, and were afterwards doubtless sought 
for and entertained as poets and writers. 

It is not for us to despise what these ■ distinguished men did 
not disdain, and what besides was granted to their family at 
a time when the recent and remarkable success of the " Cid " — a 
success previously unprecedented in the annals of the theatre — 
might justly seem a supplement to the numerous titles of the father, 
and a seal to^ the royal grant of nobility which was to descend 
to his eldest son, the great poet. The " Cid," in fact, appeared 
in 1636, and in January, 1637, exactly two hundred years ago, 
Louis XIII. signed the lettres de noblesse which were granted by 
him to Pierre Corneille, father of the great Corneille. By an edict 
of January, 1634 (Article iv.), this monarch had promised " that 
for the future he would not grant any letters to confer nobility, 
except for great and important considerations.'' These letters, 
therefore, which were granted in January, 1637, so soon after the 
publication of this edict, seem to possess an additional value : — 

" Louis, par la grace de Dieu^ roi de France et de Navarre, 
a tous present et a venir, salut. 

" La Noblesse, fille de la Vertu, prend sa naissance, en tous 
estats bien polices, des actes genereux de ceux qui tesmoignent, 
au peril et pertes de leurs biens et incommodites de leurs per- 
sonnes, estre utiles au service de leur prince et de la chose 
publique ; ce qui a donne subject aux roys nos predecesseurs et a 
nous de faire choix de ceux qui, par leur bons et louables effets, 
ont rendu preuve entiere de leur fidelite, pour les eslever et 
mettre au rang des nobles, et, par ceste prerogative, rendre leurs 
vie et actions remarquables a la posterite. Ce qui doibt servir 
demulation aux autres, a ceste exemple, de s'acquerir de I'honueur 
et reputation, en esperance de pareille rescompence. 

" Et d'autant que, par le tesmoignage de nos plus speciaux 
serviteurs, nous sommes deuement informes que nostre ame et 
feal Pierre Corneille, issu de bonne et honorable race et famille, 
a toujours eu eu bonne et singuliere recomma»dation le bien de 
cest estat et le nostre en divers emplois qu'il a eus par nostre 
commandement et pour le bien de nostre service et du publiq, et 
particulierement en I'exercice de I'office de maistre de nos eaues 
et forests, en la viconte de Rouen, durant plus de vingt ans, dont 



APPENDIX. 441 

il s est acquitte avec uii extreme soing et fidelite, pour la con- 
servatiou de nos dictes forests, et en plnsieurs autres occasions 
oil il s'est porte avec tel zele et affection que ses services rendus 
et ceux que uous esperons de luy, al'advenir, nous donnent subject 
de recongnoistre sa vertu et merites, et les decorer de ce degre 
d'honneur, pour marque et memoire a sa posterite. 

*' Scavoir faisons que nous, pour ces causes et autres bonnes et 
justes considerations a ce nous mouvans, voulans le gratifier et 
favorablement traicter, avons le diet Corneille, de nos grace 
specialle, pleine puissance et authorite royalle, ses enfans et 
posterite, masles et femelles, naiz et a naistre en loyal mariage, 
annoblys et annoblissons, et du titre et qualite de noblesse 
decore et decorous par les presentes signees de nostre main. 
Voulons et nous plaist qu'en tous actes et endroicts, tant en juge- 
ments que dehors, ils soient tonus et reputez pour nobles, et 
puissent porter le titre d'escuyer, jouyr et uzer de tous honneurs, 
privilleges et exemptions, franchises, prerogatives, preeminences 
dont jouissent et ont accoustume jouyr les autres nobles de nostre 
royaume, extraicts de noble et ancienne race ; et comme tels, ils 
puissent acquerir tous fiefs possessions nobles, de quelques 
nature et qualite qu'ils soient, et d'iceux, ensemble de ceux qu'ils 
ont acquis et leur pourroient escheoir a I'advenir, jouyr et uzer 
tout ainsy que s'ils estoient nais et issus de noble et ancienne race, 
sans qu'ils soient ou puissent estre contraints en vuider leurs 
mains, ayant, d'habondant, au diet Corneille, et a sa posterite, de 
nostre plus ample grace, permis et octroye, permectons et octroyons 
qu'ils puissent doresnavant porter partout et en tous lieux que 
bon leur seniblera, raesmes faire eslever par toutes et chacune 
leurs terres et seigneuries, leurs armoiries timbrees tels que nous 
leurs donnons et sont cy empreintes, ^ tout ainsi et en la mesme 
forme et matiiere que font et ont accoustume faire les autres 
nobles de nostre diet royaume. 

" Si donnons en mandement a nos ames et feaux conseillers les 
gens tenans nostre cour des aides a Rouen, et autres nos justiciers et 
officiers qu'il appartiendra, chacun endroit soy, que de nos pre- 
sente grace, don d'armes, et de tout le contenu ci-dessus ils facent, 

' D'azur, a la fasce d'or, charg^es de trois tctes de lion dc gucule, ct accom- 
pagnccsde trois etoilcs d'argcnt posccs deux cu dicf ct unc en doiiite. " Armorial 
general de France. Villc dc Paris, folio lOGO". Bibliolhcque Royalc." 



44a APPENDIX. 

souffrent et laissent jouyr et uzer pleinement, paisiblemeut et 
perpetuellement le dit Corneille, ses dits enfans et posterite masles 
et femelles, nais et a naistre en loial mariage, cessant et faisaut 
cesser tous troubles, et empeschemens au contraire. Car tel est 
nostre plaisir, nonobstant quelscoiiques edicts, ordonnances, re- 
vocquations, et reiglements a ce contraires, auxquels et a la 
desrogatoire des desrogatoires y contenue, nous avons desroge et 
desrogeons par les dictes presentes. Et afin que ce soit chose ferme 
et stable a toujours, nous avons faict mectre nostre seel aux dictes 
presentes, sauf, en autres choses, notre droict, et I'autruy en toutes. 
" Donne a Paris, au mois de Janvier, Pan de grace mil six cent 
trente-sept, et de nostre regne le vingt-septieme. Signe, Loui s. " Et 
surle reply, "Parle roy, De LoMiNiE," ungparaphe. Et a costevisa, 
et scelle et las de soye rouge et verd du grand sceau de cire verde. 

Et sur le diet reply est escript: " Kegistrees au registre de la 
Court des Aides en Normandie, suivant I'arrest d'icelle du vingt- 
quatrieme jour de Mars, mil six cent trente-sept. Signe De 
Lestoille," ung paraphe. 

" Louis, by the grace of God, king of France and Navarre, 
to all whom these presents may concern, greeting. 

" Nobility, the daughter of Virtue, springs, in all states which 
are wisely ruled, from the generous deeds of those who testify, at 
the peril and loss of their property and the inconvenience of their 
persons, that they are of value in the service of their prince and 
of the commonwealth ; which has induced our royal predecessors 
and ourself to make choice of those who, by their good and praise- 
worthy performances, have given full proof of their fidelity, in 
order that we may elevate them and place them in the rank of 
nobles, and by this distinction render their life and actions 
remarkable to posterity, which also may serve to excite the 
emulation of others who witness this example, to gain honour 
and reputation in hope of a similar recompense. 

" And forasmuch as that, by the testimony of our special 
servants, w^e have been duly informed that our friend and liege 
subject Pierre Corneille, sprung from good and honourable race 
and family, has always had in good and singular consideration the 
welfare of this state and of ourself in divers offices which he has 
exercised by our commandment and for the welfare of our service 



APPENDIX. Wd 

mid of the public— and particularly iu the exercise of the office of 
overseer of our woods aud forests, in the ^dscounty of Rouen, 
during more than twenty years, in which he has fulfilled his 
charge with the greatest care and fidelity, for the preservation 
of our said forests — and on several other occasions when he has 
acted with such zeal aud affection that his services already 
rendered and those which we hope to receive from him in the 
future, admonish us to recognise his virtue and deserts, aud to 
decorate them with this badge of honour, as a mark aud a 
memorial to his posterity. 

"Be it known, therefore, that we, for these causes, and led to 
this by other good aud just considerations, wishing to gratify him 
and treat him with due favour, have ennobled, aud do einioble, 
the said Comeille, his children and posterity, male and female, 
who have been or may be bom to him and them in lawful 
marriage, by our special grace, full power, and royal authority ; 
aud have decorated, aud do decorate them, with the title and 
quality of nobility by these presents signed with our hand. It 
is our will aud pleasure, that iu all acts and rights, as well in 
legal declarations as elsewhere, they should be held aud reputed 
as nobles, and should bear the title of Esquire, enjoying and 
using all the honours, privileges, and exemptions, franchises, 
prerogatives, and pre-eminences which the other nobles of our 
kingdom, descended from noble and ancient families, enjoy and 
have been accustomed to enjoy ; and, as such, that they may 
acquire all fiefs as possessed by nobles, of what nature and 
quality soever they may be ; and may enjoy and use the aforesaid, 
together with those w^hich they have acquired, or which may fall 
to them in future, iu all respects as if they had been born iu and 
descended from a noble and ancient race ; so that they shall not, 
and cannot, be constrained to give up the same out of their hands, 
since we have permitted and granted, and do permit aud grant 
fully, to the said Corneille and to his posterity, by our most 
ample grace, that they shall for the future bear, everywhere aud 
in all places in which it may seem fit to them ; and also cause 
to be placed in all and each of their lands and manors their 
arms, stamped as we have granted them, and as are here im- 
pressed X, entirely in the same form and manner as the other 
nobles of our said kingdom do, aud have been accustomed to do. 



444 APPENDIX. 

** So we give in command to our beloved and trusty counsellor 
holding our Court of Aids at Rouen, and others our justiciaries and 
officers to whom it may belong, each in his place, that of our present 
grace, gift of arms, and all the contents hereof, they should cause, 
suffer, and allow to enjoy and use fully, peaceably, and perpetually, 
the said Comeille, his children and their posterity, male and 
female, born, and to be born, in lawful wedlock, ceasing, and 
causing to cease, all troubles and hindrances to the contrary. 

" For such is our pleasure, notwithstanding whatsoever edicts, 
orders, counter-orders, and rules contrary to this, to which, and to 
the derogatory of the derogatories therein contained, we have 
derogated, and derogate, by these presents. And in order that 
this thing may be firm and secure for all future time, we have 
caused our seal to be put to these presents, saving, in other 
things, our right, and that of others, in all. 

*' Given at Paris, in the month of January, the year of grace one 
thousand six hundred and thirty-seven, and in the twenty-seventh 
year of our reign. (Signed) Louis." And on the back : " By the 
king, De Lomenie," a flourish. And on the side visa, and sealed 
and tied with red and green silk, with the great seal of green wax. 

And on the said back is written : *' Registered in the register 
of the Court of Aids in Normandy, according to the decree of 
this twenty-fourth day of March, one thousand six hundred and 
thirty-seven. (Signed) De Lestoille," a flourish. 

These letters of nobility were registered on the 27th of March, 
1637, in the Chamber of Accounts of Normandy, and were 
renewed by Louis XIV. in May, 1669, in favour of Pierre and 
Thomas Corneille. 



Appendix B.-:— Page 193. 
LETTER OF CLAUDE SARRAU TO CORNEILLE, 

REQUESTING HIM TO CELEBRATE THE MEMORY OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU, 
WHO HAD JUST DIED. 

Claude Sakrau, councillor at the Parliament of Paris, and a 
celebrated scholar, wrote, on the 14th of December, 1642, to 
Pierre Corneille, then at Rouen, where he had made the 



APPENDIX. 445 

acquaintance of SaiTau, who had lived there some time after 1640, 
during the interdiction of the Parliament of Normandy : — 

*' Scire imprimis desidero, utrum tribus eximiis et divinis tuis 
dramatibus quartum adjungere mediteris. Sed, prsesertim, 
.excitandee sunt illse tuae Divae ut aliquod carmen te seque dignum 
pangant super Magni Panis obitu. 

" ' Multis ille quidem flebilis occidit/ 

nulli flebihor quam tibi, Cornell. Ille tamen, volens, nolens, 
ApoUinari laurea caput tuum redimivisset, si perennasset diutius. 
Operum saltem tuorum insignem laudatorem amisisti. Sed non 
eget virtus tua ullius praeconio; quippe quae per universum 
terrarum orbem, 

" ' Qu6 sol exoritur, quo sol se gurgite mergit/ 

latissime simul, cum gloria tua diffusa, tot admiratores nacta 
est quot vivunt eruditi et candidi. 

*' In tanto igitur argumento silere te posse vix credam. Istud 
tamen omne fuerit tui arbitrii : 

" * Invito uou si va in Paruasso.' 

" Inaudivi nescio quid de aliquo tuo poemate sacro, quod an 
affectum, an perfectum sit, quaeso, rescribe. Vale, et me, ut 
facere te scio, diligere perge. 

" Lutetiae Parisionim, idus Decembris, 1642." 

TRANSLATION. 

" First of all, I wish to know whether, to your three excellent 
and divine dramas, you have any intention to add a fourth. But 
especially is it fitting that your muse should be excited to produce 
some poem, worthy of you and of herself, on the death of Great 
Pan. He has departed to the great sorrow of many, 

" * Multis ille quidem flebilis occidit,' 

and none has more cause to regret him than yourself. For, 
whether willingly or otherwise, had he lived longer, he would 



446 APPENDIX. 

have encircled your brow with Apollo's garland. Yoix'1'fa'fe'iost 
an illustrious admirer of your worlds. But your merit does not 
require to be proclaimed by any one ; for throughout the whole 
world — 

" ' Quo sol exoritur, quo sol se gurgite mergit,' 

SO widely has it been spread to your great glory, that wherever 
there are learned and honourable men, there have you admirers. 

" I can scarcely believe that you will be able to keep silence 
under the inspiration of such a theme ; your inclination, however, 
must decide this : 

'' ' Invito non si va in Parnasso.' 

" Rumours have reached me of some sacred poem of yours ; 
write, I beg of you, to inform me whether it is finished, or you 
have made much progress with it. Farewell : continue to love 
me, as I know you do. 

*' Claudii Sarravii EpistolcB, Epist. 40 " 



Appendix C. — Page 231. 

THE POLITICAL SIDE TAKEN BY CORNEILLE DURING 
THE FRONDE. 

Document communicated to the Academy of Rou^en hy M. Floquet, at the 
sitting of November ]8, 1836. 

As I was consulting, some time ago, a register of the Parliament 
of Normandy, I met all at once with the name of Coeneille, and 
was naturally led to inquire whether the individual alluded to was 
the great poet whose renown is so dear to us all. This register 
belongs to the period of the Fronde — the year 1650 — and the 
name of Corneille is found under the date of the 19th of 
February. A month before, the Princes of Conde and of Conti, 
and the Duke de Longueville, their brother-in-law, had been taken 
prisoners. The Queen-mother, Louis XIV.. then twelve years 
of age, Cardinal Mazarin, and all the Court had come to 
Rouen, from which place the Duchess de Longueville had fled on 
their approach, in order, at Dieppe, to attempt to gather together 
some who could shield her, in which, however, she did not succeed 
to any very great extent. The Court, which had come to Normandy 



APPENDIX. 447 

in order to defeat the designs of this intrepid and restless princess, 
could not forget all that the Duke de Longueville and his partisans 
had done during the preceding year at Rouen and in the pro- 
vince, — their plottings, their rebellion, and their levying of men 
against the king, who was confined to, and almost besieged in, 
the Chateau of Saint-Germain. Accordingly, after having 
punished the Prince, they did not spare his instruments. 

Without speaking in this place of the Marquis de Beuvron and 
of his lieutenant, La Fontaine-du-Pin, who were expelled from the 
Vieux-Palais,and of M. de Montenay, councillor to the Parliament, 
an ally of Longueville, who was deprived of his office as captain of 
the townsmen — and confining myself to that which constitutes 
the subject of this notice, — the place of Procureur-syndic of the 
Estates of Normandy was then filled by Baudry, one of the most 
skilled and eloquent advocates in the Rouen Parliament. He 
had filled this post for seventeen years to the satisfaction of his 
fellow-citizens, whose confidence he had gained by the unremitting 
zeal with which he defended their interests : but, being the advo- 
cate of the Duke de Longueville, and strongly attached to his 
person, as he had distinguished himself at Rouen, in 1649, among 
his most exalted partisans, he of course had to endure the 
severities and opposition of the Court. Accordingly, we find 
that Saintot, that master of the ceremonies who is so often 
mentioned in history, came to the palace on the 19th of February, 
with orders from the king. When introduced into the Grand 
Chamber, he saluted the Parliament, which (so the register in- 
forms us) returned his greeting, and begged him to be seated, 
— showing more civility in this, so far as that officer was concerned, 
than had been shown by the first President of the Parliament of 
Paris, who on one occasion, while in the seat of justice, impatient 
at seeing how Saintot busied and agitated himself, had answered to 
his profound and repeated salutations in the crushing words, 
" Saintot, the Court does not acknowledge your civilities." Saintot 
presented to the gentlemen of the Grand Chamber an official letter 
which had been sent by the king, the purport of which is as 
follows : — 

" De par le Roy. 

" Nos amez et feaux, ayant, pour des considerations impor- 
tantes a notre service, destitue le Sieur Baudry de la charge de 



448 APPENDIX. 

Procureur des Estatz de Normandie, nous avons, en mesmo 
temps, commis a icelle le Sieur de Corneille, pour 1 exercer at en 
faire les fonctions jusques a ce qu aux premiers Estatz il y soit 
pourveu. Sur quoy, nous vous avons bien voulu faire cette lettre, 
de I'advis de la Reyne Regente, nostre tres-bonoree dame et mere, 
pour vous en informer. Et n'estant la presente pour un autre 
subject, nous ne vous la ferons plus longue. 

" Donne a Rouen, le dix-septieme jour de Febvrier, 1650. 

" Louis, 
" De Lomenie." 

" Our friendly and loyal servants, having, for reasons importantly 
concerned with our service, deprived the Sieur Baudry of the post 
of Procureur of the Estates of Normandy, we have, at the same 
time, commissioned to the aforesaid office, the Sieur de Corneille, to 
exercise it and perform its functions until such time as provision 
may be made by the first Estates. To which end we have thought it 
well to send this letter, by the advice of the Queen Regent, our 
greatly honoured lady and mother, that you may be informed of 
the same. And not intending these presents to refer to any other 
subject, we shall not make them of greater length. 

" Given at Rouen, this seventeenth day of February, 1650. 

" Louis, 
'• De Lomenie." 

Who was this Sieur de Corneille, appointed by the king to the 
office of syndic of the Estates ? The elder Corneille, special 
master of the waters and forests at Rouen, had died on the 12th 
of February, 1639 ; Thomas, brother to Pierre, then only twenty- 
five years old, could not, we should think, have been chosen to 
occupy such an important position. I am therefore inclined to 
believe that our great poet must be here mentioned ; but where 
shall we find the proof of this ? The official letter, sent on this 
occasion to the Town Council of Rouen, was a little more ex- 
plicit ; it is as follows : — 

" Sa Majeste, ayant pour des considerations importantes a son 
service, destitue par son ordonnance de ce jourd'huy, le Sieur 



APPENDIX. ^49 

Baudry de la charge de Procureur des Estats de Normandie, et 
estant necessaire de la remplir de quelque personne capable, et dont 
lajidelite et affection soit comme, Sa dite Majeste a fait choix du 
Sieur de Corneille, lequel, pai* I'advis de la Rejne Regeute, elle a 
commis et comrnet a la dite charge, au lieu et place du dit Sieur 
Baudr}% pour doresnavant Texercer et en faire les fonctions, 
jusques a la tenue des Estats prochains, et jusques a ce qu'il en soit 
autrement ordonne par Sa dite Majeste, laquelle mande et ordonne 
a tous qu'il appartieudra de reconuoistre le dit Sieur de Corneille, 
en la dite qualite de Procureur des dits Estats sans difficulte. 
" Faits a Rouen, le quinzieme jour de Febvrier, 1650. 

" Louis, 
" De L0M.ENIE." 

" His Majesty, having for reasons which importantly concern 
his service, deprived by his decree of this day, the Sieur Baudry 
of the office of Procureur of the Estates of Normandy, and it being 
necessary to Jill it ivith some Jit person of known fidelity and affec- 
tion, His Majesty has, by the advice of the Queen Regent, made 
choice of the Sieur de Corneille, -whom He has commissioned and 
appointed to the said office, in the place of the said Sieur Baudry, 
to exercise it for the future, and \o perform its functions until the 
next meeting of the Estates, and until it shall be otherwise 
decreed by His Majesty, who commands and orders all whom it 
may concern to recognise the said Sieur de Corneille in the said 
quality of Procureur of the said Estates, without opposition. 

" Done at Rouen, this fifteenth day of February, 1650. 

" Louis, 
" De Lomenie." ' 

But in all this there is nothing to prove that the author of the 
" Cid " is the Coraeille alluded to, and I was just about to give 
up any further inquiiy when chance presented what I had failed 
to discover by research. 

In 1650 there was printed at Amsterdam a book, entitled, 
"A Special Apology for the Duke de Lougueville ; in which is 
shown the Services rendered to the State by himself and his 
House, as well in War as in Peace, with an Answer to the 

• " Registres de THotel de Ville de Rouen." 



450 APPENDIX. 

calumnious Imputations of his Enemies, by a Gentleman of 
Brittany " ^ This book, which is seldom to be met with now, 
having fallen into my hands, and its first pages appearing to be 
curious, the interest which it might possess with reference to our 
province, of which the Duke de Longueville was for so long a time 
Governor, gave me a great desire to read it through; and this the 
more because, although the title attributed the work to a gentle- 
man of Brittany, the book had all the appearance of having been 
written by a Norman, and one well informed on the affairs of the 
times. I was very soon convinced that this was the case, and 
could quite assent to the affirmation of a pamphlet of the same 
period : *' Ce Breton-la a veu plus souvent I'emboucheure de la 
Seine que celle de la Loire." " This gentleman of Brittany has 
seen the mouth of the Seine oftener than the mouth of the 
Loire." ^ But what was my delight in finding in this pamphlet 
the solution of the problem which had puzzled me for some time ! 
After having ably defended the Duke de Longueville, and after 
having endeavoured to show the injustice of the harsh treatment 
to which that prince had been subjected, the apologist turns his 
attention to the instruments of the duke who had been involved 
in his disgrace ; and, as might be supposed, the advocate Baudry 
is not forgotten. 

" Their rage," says this gentleman of Brittany, " has fastened 
itself not only upon the person and relatives of the Duke de 
Longueville, but also upon his instruments, and even upon per- 
sons who were only in a distant manner dependent upon him : 
witness the case of the Sieur Baudry, the celebrated advocate of 
the Parliament of Normandy, who, after having been Syndic of the 
Estates for the space of seventeen years, after having been nomi- 
nated by the people, and having obtained the highest respect in 
the province, as well as in the Council and the Parliament, was 
dismissed from his post, because he was valued by the Duke de 
Longueville, and because the Lieutenant-general Koques was not 



^ "Apologie particulieie pour Monsieur le Due de Longueville, ou il est traite' 
des Services que sa Maison et sa Personne ont rendus a TEstat, tant pour la 
Guerre que pour la Paix, avec la Response aux Imputations calonmieuses de ses 
Ennemis, par un Gentilhomme Breton.'''' 4to. Amsterdam, 1650, pp. 136. 

- Desadveu du libelle intitule : " Apologie Particulieie de M. le Due de 
Longueville," etc., 1651. 4to. pp. 42. 



APPENDIX. 451 

able to forgive him the grave offence which he committed when 
he presented to the Town Council the letters of the bailiff 
in favour of his Highness, besides that the ministers owed a grudge 
against him for the harangue which he made on the subject of the 
reversion granted by the Queen to the Count de Dunois." ' 

So far we have the history of the advocate Baudry, which little 
concerns us : what follows will interest us more. 

*' The Sieur Baudry," continues the apologist, " has at least 
this consolation in his disgrace, that the protection of the people * 
has not been taken away from him for any other reason than 
because they wish to oppress the people with impunity, and that 
he has not failed in the duties of his post. In fact, a successor 
has been appointed for him who knoics very icell how to make 
verses for the theatre (the Sieur Corneille, a noted dramatic 
poet, — is here inserted in an explanatory paragraph in the 
margin), hut who, it is said, is sufficiently incapable of managing 
public business. In short, he must be an enemy of the people 
or he would not be a pensioner of Mazarin." 

This gentleman of Brittany, it is plain, did not strike very hard, 
and it was really of the author of the " Cid " that he complained ; 
for, at that time, Thomas had only brought out two pieces for 
representation, '* Les Engagements du Hasard," and " Le feint 
Astrologue." Pierre Corneille, on the other hand, reigned tri- 
umphant over the theatre ; only one Corneille was then known, — 
only one was known for a long time after, — and this was our poet, 
the author of " Cinna," of " Rodogune," and of " Les Horaces ; " 
and what other could there have been, especially in 1650, qualified 
to bear the designation of a noted dramatic poet ? 

It does not appear that these duties of Procureur-syndic, 
which were taken away from the advocate Baudry, to the so great dis- 
pleasure of the friends of the Duke de Longueville, had been very 
ardently coveted by Pierre Corneille, who they say was invested 
with them to his great chagrin. The thoughts of the poet were 
occupied, for the time, only with his " Andromede " and " Don 
Sanche d'Aragon," and how could he in such a case turn his atten- 
tion to the syndicate of our provincial Estates ? Only a short time 

^ " Apologic particuliere," pp. 114, 115. 
- This must mean, — the power of protecting the people. (Note by M. Floquet.) 

u G 2 



452 APPENDIX. 

before Michel Montaigne had found himself in a similar way most 
unexpectedly made Mayor of Bordeaux, and all the functionaries 
of Guyenne thereupon composed themselves to sleep as soon us 
they could, under the peaceful regime of a mayor who himself never 
kept watch at all. I will engage to say that Pierre Corneille 
had as little dreamt that he woidd be appointed to the post of 
Procureur-syndic ; that when he was invested with this dignity he 
troubled himself very little about it, and that as he had allowed it 
to come into his possession without experiencing any very lively 
gratification, so he saw it taken from him without regret, having 
kept it without making great efforts to fulfil its duties. Indeed, 
he only remained in this office for a short time. A year after- 
wards, the gates of the citadel of Havre were thrown open to 
release the three captive princes. The Duke de Longueville, 
gaining experience by misfortune, had promised that he would 
remain quiet for the future, and he kept his word. The Duchess 
de Longueville and the Prince of Conde spared no persuasions to 
induce him to engage in new intrigues, but their efforts were 
fruitless. After the prince had become thus submissive, how 
could he be refused the restoration of all the rights and all the 
powers of which he had been despoiled in consequence of his 
exploits in 1649 ? And yet how also could this prince be reinstate 
in his ancient power without retaining a grateful recollection of 
those faithful friends who had suffered with him and for him ? 
This the Court well understood, and the duke was allowed to 
restore to all his adherents the places of which they had been 
deprived. Accordingly, we find that the Marquis de Beuvron and 
La Fontain-du-Pin re-entered the Vieux-Palais ; we find that the 
Councillor Montenay reappeared at the head of his company 
of citizen guards; and, lastly, on the 24th of March, 1651, 
M. Duhamel, the first Conseiller-echevin, brought to the Town 
Council an official letter of the 15th of March, which re- established 
M. Baudry in the post recently given to Corneille, and commanded 
all to recognise him in that capacity, just as if he had never 
been degraded. 

This was then the end .of Pierre Corneille s syndicate ; but 
he doubtless resigned it without overwhelming mortification. He 
was at that time concluding his " Nicomede," and probably con- 
jecturing what effect would be produced at the theatre by that 



APPENDIX. 453 

tone of irony and raillery which had hitherto heen unknown to 
the legitimate drama : he was thinking much about Bithynia, and 
apparently little about Normandy and its Estates. 

Perhaps this will be thought a very long narration of a very 
insignificant fact, which certainly adds nothing to the glory already 
Avon by Corneille ; but not one of his biographers have had an 
opportunity of reading all those official documents which are buried 
in the registers of the Town Council and the Palace ; and not one 
seems to have read the " Apologie " of the Duke de Longueville, 
which is such a curious commentary on those documents. My 
gratification may therefore well be pardoned at having found a 
new fact, however unimportant a one, respecting a great man 
concerning whom two centuries have had so much to relate. 



Appendix D, — Page 256. 
APPEARANCE OF PIERRE CORNEILLE 

BEFORE THE LIEUTENANT OF POLICE, AT THE CHATELET, FOR CONTRAVENTION 
or THE HIGHWAY REGULATIONS. (JULT, 1667.) 

Letter, dated July 30, 1667, to Madame , hy Robinet. {Extracted from 

Loret's "• Muse Historique") 

" AvANT que d'achever ma lettre, 
Je dois encore un mot y mettre 
De ce qui se passe a Paris, 
Et cela pourra bien reveiller les esprits. 
La police est toujours exacte au dernier point ; 

Elle ne relache point. 
Jugez-en, s'il vous plait, par ce que je \^ais dire : 

Vous pourrez bien vous en sourire ; 
Mais vous en concluerez, et selon mon souhait, 
Qu'il ne faut pas vrayement, que notre bourgeoisie 
Nonchalamment oublie 
• De tenir son devant, matin et soir, fort net. 
Vous connaissez assez Vatne des deux Corneilles, 
Qui pour vos chers plaisirs produit tant de merveilles ! 



454 APPENDIX. 

He bien, cet homme la, malgre son Apollon, 
Fut naguere cite devant cette police, 

Aiasi qu'un petit violon, 
Et reduit, en un mot, a se trouver en lice, 

Pour quelques pailles seulement, 

Qu'un trop vigilant commissaire 

Rencontra fortuitement 

Tout devant sa porte cochere. 

Jugez un peu quel affront ! 
Corneille, en son cothurne, etoit au double mont 

Quand il fut cite de la sorte ; 
Et, de peur qu une amende honnit tous ses lauriers, 

Prenant sa muse pour escorte, 
II vint, comme le vent, au lieu des plaidoyers. 

Mais il plaida si bien sa cause, 
Soit en beaux vers ou franche prose, 
Qu'en termes gracieux la police lui dit : 

' La paille tourne a voire gloire ; 

Allez, grand Corneille, il suffit.'' 
Mais de la paille il faut vous raconter I'histoire, 

Afin que vous sachiez comment 
EUe etoit a sa gloire, en cet evenement : 
Sachez done qu'un des fils de ce grand personnage 
Se mele, comme lui, de cueiller des lauriers, 
Mais de ceux qu'aiment les guerriers, 
Et qu'on va moissonner au milieu du carnage. 
Or, ce jeune cadet, a Douay faisant voir 
Qu'il sait des mieux remplir le belliqueux devoir, 
D'un mousquet espagnol, au talon, reyut niche, 
Et niche qui le fit aller a cloche-pie ; 
Si bien qu'en ce moment etant estropie, 
II fallut, quoi qu'il dit, sur le cas, cent fois, briche, 

Toute sa bravoure cesser, 
Et venir a Paris pour se faire panser. 
Or ce fut un brancard qui, dans cette aventure 

Lui servit de voiture, 

Etant de paille bien garni : 

Et comme il entra chez son pere, 

II s'en fit un peu de litiere. 

Voila tout le recit fini. 



APPENDIX. - 455 

Qui fait voir a la bourgeoisie 
(II est bon que je le redie), 
Qu'il faut, comme par ci-devaut, 
Qu'elle ait soin de tenir toujours net son devant." 



Appendix E. — Page 264, 



ON THE METEICAL TRANSLATION OF THE '' IMITATION 
OF CHRIST." 

BY CORNEILLE. (1651 — 1656.) 

CoRNEiLLE began this work in 1651, and published the first 
twenty chapters of the first book at Kouen, towards the end of 
that year, about the same time that Francois de Harlay de Chan- 
vallon, who became afterwards (in 1674) Archbishop of Paris, 
took possession of the archbishopric of Rouen. " As this prelate," 
says Comeille, in his Dedication to Pope Alexander VII. (Fabio 
Chigi, who was promoted to the Holy See on the 7th of April, 
1655), *' has marvellous talents enabling him to fulfil all the 
duties of so high a pastorate, and an indefatigable ardour in dis- 
charging them, I owe all the most radiant lights which have 
aided me in carrying out this undertaking to the vivid clearness 
of those weighty and eloquent instructions which he does not 
cease to impart to his flock, or to the secret and penetrating 
rays which his familiar conversation scatters continually for the 
benefit of those who have the happiness of being intimate with 
him. ^ * '•' In dedicating to him my work, I should have 
wished not so much to present to him a production of my own, as 
a restitution of his own proper wealth. But the kind feeling 
which this archbishop entertains for me has so far prepossessed 
him in my favour, as to lead him to think that, as this attempt of 
my pen might be useful to all Christians, so it ought to have a 
protector whose power extends itself over the whole Church ; and 
having regarded it as the first-fruits of the Christian Muse 
since he has filled the chair of Saint- Romain, he has believed that, 
off'ering it to your Holiness, was for him to offer in some sort 
the first-fruits of his diocese. His injunctions have put to silence 
the distrust which I justly entertained of my own feebleness ; and 
what without such recommendation would have been only a proof 



45G APPENDIX. 

of most outrageous presumption, has become a duty to me so soon 
as I received it. May I venture to confess that such a command 
is grateful, while it is imperative ! " 

Alexander VII. was himself a poet : he had in his youth com- 
posed some Latin poems, which were printed at the Louvre, in 
1656, after his elevation, under the title of " Philomathi Musse 
Juveniles." Corneille read these poems, and admired them 
exceedingly, especially those in which the poet has spoken of 
death. In 1656, also, Corneille finished and published the fifth 
and last part of his translation of the " Imitation of Jesus Christ," 
of which the second, third, and fourth parts had appeared at Rouen 
in 1652, 1653, and 1654. "May I venture to confess," he 
says, in his dedication to the Pope, " that I am delighted at 
being able to take this opportunity of applauding our Muses, and 
of thanking you on their account, for the time which you have 
in former days spent in their society, among the great affairs 
which (jlaimed your attention when you performed the important 
negotiations which the Sovereign Pontiffs, your predecessors, 
entrusted to your prudence. From the results of the time thus 
spent they received this striking testimony, and this invincible 
proof, that, not only are they adapted to the most exalted virtues 
and to the loftiest positions, but that they even dispose the mind 
thereto, and conduct the spirit which cultivates them thither, if it 
makes a good use of them. This is a truth which is conspicuous 
everywhere in this precious collection of Latin verses, in which 
you have not aimed at any other designation than that of a Friend 
to the Muses — and which that great prelate (Harlay de Chan- 
vallonj has taken pleasure in bringing under my notice as early as 
possible. He has made me read it, he has made me admire it, 
with him ; and, to do you the justice which it is fitting should be 
rendered, during the whole of this reading I could merely repeat 
the eulogies which each verse drew from his lips. But among so 
many excellent things nothing made at the time so strong an 
impression on my mind — and no impression has been so enduring — 
as those admirable thoughts on death which you have scattered 
so abundantly through the volume. They brought to my mind 
serious reflections how I must appear before God, and render to 
Him an account of the talent with which he has blessed me. 

" This led me to consider that it was not enough that I had so 



APPENDIX. 457 

happily been able to purge our theatre from the grossnesses 
which had been, as it were, incorporated into it by preceding ages, 
and from the licentiousness which the last ages had allowed ; — that 
it ought not to content me that in their place a throne had been 
established for moral and political excellences, and even to some 
extent for Christian virtues ; — that it behoved me to carry my 
thoughts further, and bring all the ardour of my genius to some 
new trial of its energies, which should have no less aim than the 
service of the great Master and the benefit of my neighbour. This 
it is which has induced me to undertake the translation of this 
devout moral treatise, which, by the simplicity of its style, opens 
up a way for the fairest graces of poesy ; and, so far from 
increasing my own reputation, I seem to sacrifice to the glory of 
the illustrious author all that I have myself been able to gain in 
this description of ^mting. 

" After having experienced such happy results of the general 
obligation which is acknowledged to your Holiness by all the Muses, 
I should be the most ungrateful of men, did I not dedicate 
my work to him who was its primary originator. My con- 
science would bitterly and ever reproach me if I suffered such 
neglect. * - * * " 

The work was approved before its publication by two doctors of 
the Sorbonne, Robert Le Cornier de Sainte-Helene, and Antoine 
Gaulde, vicars-general of M. de Harlay. On the cover of a copy 
which was given in 1831 to the public Library of Rouen, by 
M. Henri Barbet, Mayor of the town, the following words, in the 
handwriting of Corneille, are inscribed : — 

" Pour le R. P. Dom Augustin Vincent, Chartreux, son tres- 
humble serviteur et ancien ami, Corneille." 



Appendix F. — Page 266. 
PENSIONS AND GIFTS BESTOWED ON CORNEILLE 

UNDER LOUIS XTIL AND LOUIS XIV. 

That Corneille shared in the liberalities dispensed by Cardinal 
Richelieu there can be no doubt ; but whether he received from 
the Cardinal a pension, at what time he received it, and what was 
its amount, we cannot accuratelv determine. 



458 APPENDIX. 

Mazarin also made gifts to Corneille, though doubtless with less 
munificence than Richelieu. 

The dedication of " Cinna " to M. de Montauron, and several 
minor facts, prove that wealthy persons, financiers, and others, 
also bestowed upon Corneille splendid proofs of their admiration. 

It was in consequence of the liberality of Fouquet that Cor- 
neille, in 1658, determined to continue to work for the theatre. 

In 1662, Colbert, by the order of Louis XIV., employed 
Costar and Chapelain separately to draw up a list of learned men 
and literary characters who were deserving of royal favour. In 
the list drawn up by Costar we read : — 

" Corneille, the first dramatic poet in the world." 
And in that drawn up by Chapelain: — 

" CoENEiLLE (Pierre) is a prodigy of genius and the ornament 
of the French theatre. He has learning and sense which, how- 
ever, appear rather in the details of his pieces than in their 
general conception, the design being often faulty — so much so, 
that they would deserve to be classed only with commonplace pro- 
ductions were not this general artistic defect amply compensated 
by an excellence in particulars which imparts the greatest 
perfection of refinement to the execution of the parts. Separated 
from the theatre, it is impossible to say whether he would succeed 
in prose or verse composition, when acting on his own account ; 
for he has but small experience of the world, and sees but little 
that exists out of his own immediate sphere. His paraphrase 
translations of the * Imitation of Jesus Christ ' are very beautiful 
productions, but are merely translations, requiring but little 
inventive genius." 

Corneille, after this, received a pension from the king of two 
thousand livres. 

He had indirectly obtained, in 1655, a gift, the exact value of 
which we cannot determine. On the 15th of April, 1645, 
Mathieu de Lamperiere, his father-in-law, died while in possession 
of the office of special civil lieutenant to the presidial bailiwick of 
Gisors, established at Andelys. The vacant office fell to Pierre 
Corneille, by right of his wife, Marie de Lamperiere, and as 
her share in the inheritance. Corneille (who had previously 



APPENDIX, 459 

resigned the office of Royal Advocate at the Marble Table of 
the Palace, at Rouen), not desiring to exercise the functions of 
special civil lieutenant at Andelys, resigned his office in favour of 
Marin Duval, who was appointed to it by the king, and took the 
oaths of his office before the Parliament of Rouen, December the 
2nd, 1651. The stipend belonging to the office, which fell due 
in this intermediate time (that is to say, during the time when 
the post became vacant, from April 15, 1645, to December 3, 
1651, the day when the vacancy was filled up) would, according to 
ordinary usage, have fallen to the Treasury. But Louis XIV., 
on the 7th of September, 1655, signed letters patent, called 
intermediate, by virtue of which the whole of the stipends which 
had become due during the time in which the office was vacant 
were assigned to Pierre Comeille, to whom the king commanded 
them to be paid. These letters are addressed to the Chamber of 
Accounts at Rouen, enjoining them to grant and allow in account 
to Pierre Corneille, the said stipends and rights belonging to 
the said office — and this from April 15, 1645, up to Decem- 
ber 2, 1651. 

On the 27th of November, 1655, the Chamber of Accounts 
of Rouen, on occasion of the request presented to it by 
Pierre Corneille, Esquire, ordered, by an official declaration, the 
registration of these letters-patent, which exist in the " Memoriaux 
de la Chambre des Comptes de Rouen,"' from whence M.Floquet 
has kindly extracted for me these particulars. 

Between the year 1674 — in which his son, who was a lieutenant 
of cavalry, died, having been killed at the siege of Graves — 
and the year 1683, in which Colbert died, we find that the 
following petition was addressed by Corneille, doubtless to 
Colbert. The exact date I have been unable to determine : — 

" SiK, — In the misfortune which has happened to me, for the 
last four years, of having received no part of the gratuities by 
which His Majesty is accustomed to honour literary men, I cannot 
seek for assistance more justly and with better prospects of a 
favourable notice from any one than from you, to whom I am 
entirely indebted for the favours which I have already received. 

' Vol. Ixxiii. lolio 219, " Archives de la Prefecture." 



460 APPENDIX. 

I myself never have, I know, merited this distinction ; but 
I have at least endeavoured to prove myself not altogether 
unworthy of it by the use which I have made of it. I have not 
applied it to my own personal necessities, but to keep two sons in 
the armies of His Majesty, of whom one was killed in service at 
the siege of Graves ; the other has now served for fourteen years, 
and is a captain of light cavalry. 

" Therefore, sir, the withdrawal of this favour, to the enjoyment 
of which you have accustomed me, cannot but sensibly affect me in 
this last respect ; not in mj domestic interests, although that were 
the sole advantage which I have received after fifty years of toil, 
but because this was an honourable mark of esteem which the 
king was graciously pleased to bestow for the talent which God 
has given me, and because this disgrace will very soon put me out 
of a position any longer to support my son in the service in which 
he has employed the greater part of my small property, that he 
might honourably fill the post which he there occupies. I dare 
hope, sir, that you will have the kindness to afford me your pro- 
tection, and not to allow your own work to be destroyed. But, if 
I am so unfortunate as to be mistaken in entertaining this hope, 
and must remain excluded from the favours which I so highly 
prize, and which are so necessary to me, I only ask from yoii that 
you will do me the justice to believe that the continuance of this 
unhappy influence will not, in any way, weaken either my zeal for 
the service of the king, or the sentiments of grateful recollection 
which are due to you for your past kindness ; and that, until I 
breathe my last sigh, I shall feel it an honour to be, with all 
possible devotedness and respect, 

" Your very humble, obedient, and obliged servant, 

" CORNEILLE." 

Through what causes Corneille had ceased to enjoy his pension 
of 2000 livres, we do not know. There is reason to believe that 
the pension was immediately restored to him : for we read in the 
margin of his petition these words, written, it would appear, by 
Colbert : — " Pension granted to literary men, and of which he 
has been deprived for four years." Nevertheless, after the death 
of Colbert, in September, 1683, and only a short time before his 
own death (October 1, 1684), Corneille was still in a state of 



APPENDIX. 461 

great poverty. It was then that Boileau, nobly protesting against 
such a disgrace being offered to literature, informed Louis XIV. 
of the circumstance, and offered to give up his own pension in 
order that Corneille, in his declining health, might at least be 
able to procure the necessaries of existence. The king imme- 
diately sent to Corneille 200 louis, and commissioned LaChapelle, 
a relation of Boileau, to convey the money to him. 



Appendix G. — Page 267. 
ON THE MANUSCRIPT OF ACCOUNTS 

FOR THE PARISH OF SAINT-SAVIOUR, AT ROUEN, KEPT AND PRESENTED 
BY CORNEILLE, IN 1651 AND 1652. 

The learned and accomplished M. Delille discovered at Eouen, 
in 1840, a fact and a manuscript, which are full of interest, with 
reference to the life of Corneille. I will present his discovery 
here in the same terms in which he himself related it, in 1841, 
to the Academy of Rouen : — 

" We know that Pierre Corneille was born at Rouen, in the 
Rue de la Pie, in the paternal mansion, and that this house was 
situated in the parish of Saint- Saviour, of which the Church, which 
occupied a part of the Vieux-Marche, has completely disappeared. 
Having had occasion to examine the registers of this parish, in the 
archives of the department, whither they were removed at the 
Revolution, I have been fortunate enough to find a proof that the 
family of Pierre Corneille and himself were not strangers to 
the administration of this parish, and that testimonies to this fact, 
written in their hand, remain in these registers. * * * In 
following the track of this illustrious name through one of these 
huge folio volumes, still covered with its ancient calf binding, 
which contains the account of the parish of Saint-Saviour from the 
year 1622 to the year 1653, inclusively, what was my surprise and 
joy at discovering in the accounts of 1651 and 1652 the writing 
of Corneille himself, filling thirty-three entire pages ! All this 
was in his own handwriting. It was a statement of the receipts 
and expenses of the parish, which Pierre Corneille presented, as 



462 APPENDIX. 

acting-treasurer, to his companions in ofi&ce. The preamble 
to this account, written like all the rest in his own handwriting, 
is as follows : — 

" ' Compte et estat de la recepte mise et despense que Pierre 
Corneille, Escuyer, cy-devant avocat de Sa Majeste aux sieges 
generaux de la Table de Marbre du Palais a Rouen, tresorier 
en charge de la paroisse de Saint-Sauveur au dit Rouen, a faite 
des rentes, revenues et deniers appartenants a la dicte Eglise, et ce 
pour I'annee commenyant a Pasques, 1651, et finissant a pareil 
jour, 1652, par luy presente a Messieurs les cure et tresoriers de la 
dicte paroisse, a ce que pour sa decharge il soit precede a I'examen 
du diet compte et clausion d'icelui.' 

"'Account and statement of receipts, disbursements, and ex- 
penses, which Pierre Corneille, Esquire, formerly advocate of His 
Majesty at the General Sittings of the Marble Table of the Palace 
at Rouen, acting- treasurer for the parish of Saint-Saviour in the 
said Rouen, has made of the rents, revenues, and moneys 
belonging to the said parish, for the year beginning at Easter, 
1651, and ending on the same day of 1652, by him presented to 
the incumbent and treasurers of the said parish, in order that 
before his retirement the examination and closing of the said 
account may be duly gone through.' 

*' Then follows the detailed account, first of the receipts, then of 
the expenses, arranged in chapters in 1 82 articles, with the amounts 
carried out in the margin, all written with much neatness, and 
classed with singular regularity. * * * At the end of the 
account presented by Pierre Corneille, there is inscribed in the 
register, under the date of Monday, April 1, 1652, the con- 
firmation of it which was given by the incumbent and treasurers 
of the parish. This confirmation is signed by these gentlemen 
and by Pierre Corneille himself. 

" These thirty-three folio pages, entirely in the handwriting of 
this great man, are, notwithstanding the small amount of interest 
attaching to the matters treated of, an exceedingly valuable relic 
for the town of Rouen. The handwriting of Corneille is exceed- 
ingly seldom to be met with. This was the same year in which 
Corneille wrote his admirable tragedy of " Nicomede," and 



APPENDJX. 463 

perhaps the same pen which was employed in writing this parish 
account was also employed in the tragedy. There is no doubt 
that it was composed at Rouen. 

" That Corneille made a prolonged sojourn in his native town 
is confii'med by these registers of Saint- Saviour, although the 
generally received opinion is opposed to this. His signature is 
to be found there in the years 1648, 1649, 1651, and 1652, which 
shows that he was then at Rouen. We find him there almost 
continually up to the year 1662, the period when his latest 
biographer, M. Taschereau, supposes he quitted Rouen and took 
up his residence in Paris. After the year 1662, his name does 
not again appear. * * ^^ 

"At the end of the account presented by Corneille to the 
treasurers of his parish, we read in the register, under the date 
of April 1, 1652, the following note : — 

" ' There was given by the Sieur Corneille, to the treasury of the 
said parish, a black velvet pall, for which his mother contributed 
the sum of one hundred livres which she has given to the said 
treasury, in order that the said Sieur Corneille might have the 
privilege of availing himself of it for them and his family and 
domestics, without paying anything for it.' 

" This gift proves that Corneille entertained at that time the 
intention of ending his days at Rouen. It was destined to be 
otherwise. The black velvet pall at the church of Saint-Saviour 
did not cover the remains of the great poet ; Saint-Roch, at Paris, 
was to be the scene of his obsequies." 

(Biographical note on Pierre Corneille, by M. A. Delille, in the 
" Precis des Travaux de lAcademie Royale de Rouen pour TAnnee 
1840," pp. 276—283.) 



THE END. 




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